Adventures in Child Care and Other One Shots
by Perspicacity
Summary: An assortment of Harry Potter one shots starting with my first: "Ron and Hermione deal with the aftermath of having Harry take care of their toddler. Much to their dismay, he proves to be a corrupting influence." Will be updated from time to time. Stories contain crossovers with several fictional worlds, including the Cthulhu Mythos, Starship Troopers, Star Wars, and James Bond.
1. Adventures in Child Care

Disclaimer: Story based on characters and plot owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended with the following.

* * *

"Sliced the bloody ho!"

Hermione Granger-Weasley sighs in exasperation. "Emmy, that's naughty language. We don't say "bloody" and we certainly don't say "ho." Now eat your carrots, please..."

"Mow the jungle!" The toddler shakes her head defiantly at her mother, protruding her lower lip. "Old bag."

The bushy-haired witch glares at her husband.

The lanky, red-haired man has a resigned look that evinces his knowledge that this is a confrontation that he can only lose--the question being, how badly. He opts to try the "apologize immediately" strategy. "Sorry, dear, I know. I shouldn't have left her with Harry all day. Yes, we've been through this before..."

Emmy balls her hands into fists and pounds on the tray of her high chair. This causes pieces of carrot and macaroni pasta to fly onto her mother's lap. "Hold my balls!" she squeals with glee.

"Hey, what's up?" Harry saunters into the kitchen, tanned and relaxed. His smile disappears when he sees the fury on the faces of his two close friends.

"Just where the bloody hell did you go today with my daughter?" Ron shouts.

"Ron, language!" Hermione says, more out of habit and principle than genuine concern.

"Sorry, dear."

"Bloody hell!" parrots Emmy. "Dump her in t'lake or bury her in the sand."

"Look, guys..." Harry holds his hands up defensively, backing up a step.

The tension is arrested as the floo flares and Molly, matriarch of the Weasley clan, steps out of the fireplace.

"Harry!" She hugs Harry tightly. "I haven't seen you for ages! Are you eating well?"

"Yes, ma'am." He rolls his eyes as he tries to find a way to pull out of her grasp. He knows that Molly means well, but being pressed so tightly against the woman's ample, sagging breasts gives him the screaming heebie jeebies.

"And have you found a lady friend yet?"

"No, ma'am." He twists free and backs up against the wall.

"Well, Ginny is still available, you know. She always did have a soft spot in her heart for you, Harry..."

Harry and Ron share an awkward look as Hermione coughs. The silence stretches.

"Shank t' bitch!" Emmy giggles and looks at Ron. "Does Daddy have shank bitch!"

"W-what?" Molly yells, her face reddening.

"That's it!" yells Hermione. "Out!" The brillo-haired Weasley-in-law grabs a wooden spoon and chases Harry from the kitchen.

Several minutes pass. Outside, Ron approaches, a beer in hand. "Apparently, using the sentence "Does Daddy have to shank a bitch?" is considered unorthodox parenting. Who knew?"

"Heh, yeah. Look, Ron..." Harry explains the situation to his longtime friend.

"Just go apologize. I'm sure she'll understand, eventually."

The two enter the kitchen to find Molly feeding Emmy. "Open wide... Hogwarts Express is coming through..." Hermoine has her head face-down on the table.

"Hermione, I'm sorry. Look, I took Emmy with me golfing today, and she picked up some of the phrases from the guys."

"Golfing?" Hermione's jaw drops.

"Yeah. Sorry. I'll be more careful next time about the language and all." Harry waves to the other occupants of the kitchen. "Anyway, I've gotta run. Bye all."

"Bye, Harry." Hermione grumbles as he apparates away.

"Choo, choo..." Molly tries to get Emmy to open up for another spoonful of carrots.

Emmy looks at her. "Gin-gin, ten galleons for a blow?"


	2. Pregnancy

"You know, you could have cast the contraception charm too, Ron. It's not like I should be responsible for remembering everything."

"But you're the woman!"

"And your point is?"

"Just that, well, it's sort of your job to remember. Just like it's mine to kill spiders--and you know how much I like doing that--and remember your birthday and to wank before we go on a date and to..."

"Wait, you masturbate before we are together?"

"Well, yeah. Hello, I'm eighteen? Unless you want it to be 'uh, uh, ahhhh', I have to bloody wank first. Everyone does it."

"I never knew. So that's why..."

"Yeah. I guess I should have given pointers."

"You're still a sexist prat, Ron."

"Maybe, but now we're, you know, pregnant. Merlin, Mum is so going to go through the roof."

"_Your_ mum? What about mine? I'm way too young to start a family..."

"Well, we could..."

"No. Absolutely not. It's completely out of the question."

"I was only saying, Hemione. Anyway, don't you think it's something we should at least talk about? Both of us have a stake in it, you know..."

"The hell it is. This is not open for debate."

"Fine. But what am I going to say?"

"To your parents? I don't know, Ron. How about the truth?"

"That we're pregnant?"

"That we were role playing with Polyjuice--how you talked me into it, I'll never know--and forgot the charm."

"I don't want to share that much with them--they're still getting over that we're having sex!"

"Well I don't know how else you're going to-- Oh, there's the door. They're early."

"Well, what do you expect after your fire-call? You're all, 'Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, we've got something _dreadfully_ important to share with you. Please come by this evening.' Like they're going to sit on that."

"Are you going to get the door? Or just make them stand out there all night?"

"The thought had crossed my mind--Ow! Okay, I'm getting it."

"Ron, dear. Hermione. How are you? Are you sick? Is everything okay?"

"We're _fine_ mum."

"Son? You don't look so fine. The Cannons didn't retract their offer, did they?"

"No, it's not that. It's just, well it's hard to explain."

"Now don't worry. Your mother and I love you both. We're your parents. You can share anything with us."

"Okay. Mum, Dad, I'm pregnant."

* * *

Originally a writing exercise on The Reading Consortium, I thought I'd add it here before the site vanishes. Thanks to Tinn Tam for posing the challenge (tell a story solely in dialogue).

Wow. I wrote an mpreg fic. I feel a little dirty...


	3. Golden Patronus

I still don't own Harry Potter.

Once upon a time, there was a website called Dark Lord Potter. This site got a lot of bad press in the fandom (much of it deserved) in part because it attracted a clientele constitutionally intolerant of fluff and who thrived on stories featuring many of the so-called "Indy!Harry" clichés: an over-powered, angry, adolescent Harry who hates the Weasleys and struggles to escape the influence a highly manipulative, somewhat evil Dumbledore. Read with particular glee were stories where Ginny dies a painful death.

The site has mellowed considerably in the last few years, although there's still recognition of its roots. Occasional throw-back "kill-offs" of Ginny, Snape, or Draco are held that impel site authors to pen short pieces where these characters meet their ends. The following is my contribution to one of these, which, like all kill-off stories, should be read as tongue-in-cheek. (I actually like Ginny as a character when written well).

What follows is a short death-by-cliché for Ginny. My apologies to Jim (jbern) for abusing his golden patronus so.

A final cautionary note: If the idea of a kill-off (a brutal death of a character "just because") bothers you, then DO NOT READ THIS CHAPTER). You've been warned.

* * *

"Damn!" Harry swore under his breath.

"What's wrong, dear," his redheaded wife asked, dropping the dough she was working to the counter in a cloud of white. Though magic could knead, Ginny preferred using her hands. Not only did it make for tender pastry crust, but is also left opportunities for the corpulent woman to lick butter from her pudgy digits, butter dipped in brown sugar and cinnamon, no less.

Harry looked over at the blobby woman and wished again that he'd taken up with Cho after the war. Though ditzy, his former crush was now an exotic dancer and damned hot, as required for her profession. The occasional shags he'd had with Hermione, his best mate's wife, just weren't enough to sustain a man whose libido, like his magical prowess, had skyrocketed after the final battle.

Scaling Mount Ginny at night, with her sour, fat-lady stink, left him incredibly unsatisfied.

"Forgot to tell Ron to bring his own damned bottle. Bastard's gonna clean out the wet bar again, I just know it."

"Language, dear," she said, putting a hand on her ample belly. "We wouldn't want little Mollily's ears to hear."

Harry closed his eyes and counted to ten. His wife wasn't pregnant, thankfully, yet she remained fixated on that stupid name, a combination of "Molly" and "Lily."

"Just send him a Patronus message," she said.

"Good idea."

Harry drew his holly and phoenix feather wand with a flourish and concentrated on his happiest recent memory, the lap dance Cho had given him, gratis, for his birthday last July. He heard a whoosh and opened his eyes to see a massive, golden stag leave the end of his wand. Unlike a normal Patronus, this Prongs was not only corporeal, but also solid. It clopped across the floor, leaving faint divots in the wood, and then sensed an enemy. It lowered its massive, 14-point crown and charged.

Ginny screamed as the magical construct slammed into her body and buried its antlers into her flesh. The sound ended in a wet crunch as she was flung into the kitchen wall, her back broken and the back of her skull flattened. The Patronus wriggled its head free and turned toward Harry with a penitent look.

"Bad Prongs, bad," Harry said, feeling horrified and a tad elated. And then horrified at feeling elated. "Though she did make me relive my worst moments—hell, she gave me most of them—Ginny wasn't a Dementor."

The Patronus nodded, then leaped through the picture window, shattering it on impact. As Harry repaired the glass, he saw it bound across the adjoining meadow to deliver its important message.

Harry took a look at his wife's lifeless body and caught himself wondering whether it was too late to hire Cho for a private party.


	4. Family Magic

I still don't own Harry Potter.

Another short story that would otherwise gather dust on my hard drive. The following is an omake from the sequel to my novel, _Dagger and Rose_, but having read it is not necessary to understand. Fleur uses her Veela power and a bit of family magic to orchestrate an escape for her and Harry.

Warning: possibly a little smutty for some.

* * *

**Family Magic**

By Perspicacity

Ice coats Harry's veins as he feels the entrapment charm wash over him and the air suddenly smells of turpentine. Apparition and Portkey use are impossible.

"Shit," he says, not caring that he's cursing before his beloved. She hurls an explosive hex at the wall, but the yellow bolt of magical energy absorbs into the enspelled stonework. Harry's own _Expulso_ hex bounces harmlessly off a boarded up portal.

Eight elite Death Eaters stand with a dozen lycan from Fenrir Greyback's pack. The exit is closed off, the trap sprung. Harry watches in despair as they confer on how to defeat the two Runescrive adepts. He doesn't like their odds.

Fleur curses again as another of her spells absorbs into the wall. Seeing no brute force solution, Harry pulls her into a small alcove out of sight of their attackers.

"We can't win," he says flatly, steeling himself. "Look, I'll charge them. While they're distracted, you transform and fly aw..."

"You're going to explode in zeir midst?" she interrupts.

Harry nods. "It's the only way. I think I can take most of them them out."

Harry hears a loud slap and his cheek stings, then feels hot. The Veela's nostrils flare. "Idiot. I refuse to allow you kill yourself for me."

"Fleur, please. It's the only way we can ensure at least one of us survives."

"You'll respect my wishes and accept that zere must be another way, one which does not require one of our deaths!" she huffs. In the shaded archway, Harry sees her skin flush and her breasts heave as she breathes heavily. Despite the circumstances, he feels himself arouse.

Fleur notices, as she always does, and a tiny, elfin smile graces her face. Faint, silver runes set into her skin glisten. Harry recognizes from her body language that she has a plan.

A pebble clatters across the cobblestone street and Harry looks up. Two ragged lines approach, Werewolves in front, Death Eaters behind. Their wands are out.

"'Arry, do you trust me?"

"Implicitly."

"Good." Fleur rips his robes open and black buttons scatter onto the cobblestones. She tugs at his belt.

"Fleur?!" His voice is an octave higher than normal.

"Hush, my love," she says, her fingers working the fasten for his trousers. "If you wish for us live, I must see your penis."

Harry blinks and before he realizes, he's bared to mid-thigh. Fleur takes his organ in her hand and looks up at him with a gleam in her eye. Harry, for his part, blushes to his ankles.

"Zis I is good."

"It is?" he squeaks.

"Your penis, it is of average size, not 'uge like some."

"That's... a good thing?"

His angel nods, releasing him. "Drink three blood replenishing potions," she says curtly.

"Okay," he squeaks, turned away from her and trying in vain to pull his trousers up. He manages, sort of, and takes the potions from a pouch on his belt, unstoppers them, and pauses. Quaffing so many when one isn't bleeding can induce a stroke. He glimpses Fleur unbuttoning her blouse.

"Do it!" she commands, not even looking at him.

Harry obeys and tosses back the slightly sweet and salty elixirs. When he's done, he notices his girlfriend is skyclad. Harry swallows heavily. At least he'll die having seen her in her full glory.

He hears several growls and grunts nearby--Greyback's pack have noticed her allure and lack of attire. Werewolves, even when not transformed, have beastly appetites.

Harry feels someone grab his head and jerk it upward and he is face-to-face with the Veela. Blue eyes of impossible beauty fill his vision.

"'Arry, you must take ze spell from my mind and cast it. It is of my muzzer's design, made for one of her parties. Zis is important--you must cast it _with all your strength_."

He nods and opens a Legilimency link to the witch. As soon as his Occlumency barriers lower, a memory is shoved into his mind. After a moment's assimilation, he knows what he must do. He steps forward and raises his wand. He twirls it's tip and then thrusts forward powerfully.

"_Engorgio mentula maxima_!"

With his words, a gout of magic explodes outward with him at the epicenter. A moment passes and he feels an unusual tightness about his groin, but forgets it as he stands transfixed by the blonde nymph. Nude, lissome, and utterly perfect, she steps into the alley with her Veela allure ablaze. It's his beloved, tapping her family magic more than he's ever before seen, becoming an avatar of sexuality and desire. A tiny part of him, buried beneath a mountain of naked want, is reminded just how dangerous Veela can be when they're in their element.

She speaks and all are entranced by the dulcet words.

"Please, kind sirs, I am but a poor, virginal girl. I beg of you, find it in your hearts to spare me. I'm willing to do _anything_ for your mercy..." At that, she kneels, her pert breasts bouncing as she does, and she looks up at them innocently through impossibly long lashes.

Harry's heart beats rapidly and he finds himself perspiring. He barely retains his senses as his primal urges threaten to trump reason. His erection as strong as he's ever felt and he subconsciously unfastens and lowers his trousers.

All of the Werewolves and the Death Eaters do as well, but Harry doesn't notice. Rather, his eyes remain on the beautiful, kneeling creature. Were they not, he may notice that the Werewolves and Death Eaters also have massive, ensorcelled, erect members, each as thick around as his thigh and long enough to reach the ground. He may hear multiple, fleshy thuds as his assailants fall to the ground, dead from acute blood loss to the brain. He may notice the smirk on the Veela woman's face as she saunters toward him, eying him below the waist.

Harry tries to speak, but stops as a fingertip touches his lips.

"Hush, my love," she says, kneeling slowly. She takes him in her hands and gives him a gentle kiss. "You poor, poor man. We must take care of zis."

He blinks, wondering how she could possibly accomplish what she has in mind.

"Ze jaws of Veela, 'Arry, zey are double jointed."


	5. Wizard's Chess

A bit of fun, inspired by my son's recent chess tournament. I feel a bit bad for Ron, though. I think I may have to make him a hero in a later story to make up for it...

Many thanks to Alpha Fight Club for the help. I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

**Wizard's Chess**

by Perspicacity

Harry groans as Ron's queen splits his king in two lengthwise with its scepter, thus ending the brief, but violent and largely one-sided debate at the chessboard. Ron stands and does a short victory dance, complete with fist pumps and hip thrusts.

"That was a hideous effort, even by your standards, Harry. C'mon, let's have another game. Who knows? You might even get lucky and last more than a dozen moves--if I let you, that is."

Harry grits his teeth and starts to truly despise being stuck in the infirmary. It would appear that the "reward" one receives for defeating Voldemort and saving the Philosopher's Stone is to be trounced repeatedly in a game one doesn't even enjoy. Worse than losing, though, are Ron's antics, rubbing Harry's face in each loss. Sure, Ron did do his part by playing the game down in the tunnel, but to hear him tell it, he, not Harry, faced Querrill, saved the Stone, and won the House Cup.

While Harry would be the first to say that he's rubbish at the game, something from the last game bothers him. He had seen what to his admittedly naïve eye might have been a clever combination, one where his knight could move into position to attack Ron's queen and rook and exchange it one of the more valuable pieces. The knight had argued otherwise, however, that it should be moved to the side of the board instead. Harry had relented and observed its smugness as it Harry's opponent make short work of the game.

He resets his side of the board and carefully parses a question.

"Ron, you're obviously an expert at this game. Before we play again, could you please explain to me something about Wizard's Chess?"

Ron makes a magnanimous gesture and beckons Harry to continue.

"I notice you almost never listen to your pieces. Why is that?" Harry asks.

"Yeah. Ruddy things would never let me play how I wanted if I did."

"So, they give you bad advice?"

"Sometimes. Oh, they're good for catching if they're left where the other guy can take them or something, but each piece just wants to survive. They don't care about winning the game overall, which is good in your case, since they'd revolt if they did."

Harry is upset now. Ron has told him repeatedly to listen to his pieces, always. "So... maybe I shouldn't listen to them from time to time?"

Ron smirks. "Well,_ I_ wouldn't, but you should because you're pants at chess. You haven't a strategic bone in your body and have no mind for tactics at all. Your game would be far worse if you didn't listen."

Harry starts to interject, but before he can, Ron blurts out, "You know, it's a good thing you have the whole Boy Who Lived thing going for you, mate. You wouldn't make it far in the real world with a simple mind like yours."

Harry considers mentioning that he was the superior in all his classes and that he might have done better still had he not spent so much time losing at chess, but he holds his tongue. Ron's callous statements have crystallized something inside of him. He feels a competitive fire grow that had been absent before, when he'd simply approached the activity as a way for him and his best mate to bond and assuage the latter's prickliness and jealousy.

Ron seems to truly believe himself to be Harry's superior because he was better at chess? Well, he would see about that.

* * *

"Fine, if neither of you two can give me a challenge, I'll find Neville and see if he'll play," Ron says, gathering his board and pieces and leaving the cabin.

Harry finds Ron's comments a little unfair. After a few failed starts, Harry has started lasting longer in their games when employing the charm to make the pieces stay silent.

The door closes behind his friend, leaving Harry and Hermione alone in the cabin. Harry mutters, "How tedious. I thought he'd never leave."

"He acts as if there were nothing more to life than chess," Hermione says.

Harry sighs. "Dumbledore did call him out with that chess match he played and I know he's always had issues with his brothers doing better in, well, everything _but_ chess. I guess it's his moment in the sun and all, so he's making it last."

"But that was over a week ago," Hermione says. She's apparently as fed up as Harry with their friend. "I just wish he'd find something else to talk about. He's not even started his revisions for next term." She gives Harry a calculating look. "I suppose you haven't either?"

Harry leans back, his arms crossed, and says swottily, "Oh, those. I finished them ages ago, while I was in the infirmary." Hermione giggles. "Actually, My aunt and uncle hate magic, so I doubt I'll have much chance to do any work over the holiday."

"That's horrible! How will you keep up on your reading?"

Harry shrugs. "I'll manage. Actually, I did have something I wanted to ask you. Do you know any good books on chess?"

"You're not going to turn chess-obsessed, are you?"

"I haven't the hair for it, though I wouldn't mind improving my game a bit."

"Well, I did pick up some books to learn more about the game. You're welcome to borrow them if you like."

"I would like that very much."

* * *

"And we'll have no funny business in this house this summer. You'll keep yourself out of trouble and keep that ruddy owl locked up where it belongs!" Harry's uncle lays down the law before he's even unpacked.

Harry had spent most of the ride back from King's Cross studying one of Hermione's books, one written by an American bloke, Bobby Fischer, whom Hermione said was utterly bonkers, but a brilliant chess player nonetheless. One of the lessons he had picked up was the idea of a "gambit," the exchange of something not so valuable, like a pawn, for a tactical or positional advantage. Harry saw this moment as an opportunity for a gambit.

"Sir, I agree completely," Harry says humbly, fighting to avoid tittering at Uncle Vernon's expression, his mouth open in shock at Harry's words. "If I might be permitted to make a suggestion, perhaps we could lock my things in the cupboard and I could send Hedwig away to stay with my friend so she's not underfoot. Also, I would like to do my chores early in the morning, if possible, and when I'm done, I think it would be best if I were someplace else the rest of the day, where the neighbors won't be forced to recognize my unhealthy unnaturalness."

"Right, then," Vernon says, deflated for a moment, but he builds up a head of steam anyway. "And you'll keep your things locked up and you'll send that bloody bird away! I'll give you a list of chores I want done in the morning and then I want you out of my sight until nightfall. Do you hear me?"

"Yes sir. That's an excellent suggestion, sir. Let me just put my things in the cupboard."

"Good. Now put your things in the cupboard," Vernon says, feeling pleased at having had the advantage in the conversation.

Harry struggles with his heavy trunk, but eventually manages to slide it across the tile floor and into the cupboard under the stairs. As he does, he notices the regulation chessboard and chessmen that Dudley had been given several birthdays before and never used.

Harry takes the set from the cupboard and shows it to his uncle. "Sir, could I possibly borrow this?"

"Chess? And why should I allow you to have that?"

"It's a good, honest game for honest folk, sir. There's nothing unnatural at all about chess, and I was, er, hoping that if I could play chess, then I would have less time for, you know, other things." He puts just the right amount of emphasis on "other things."

"I suppose..."

* * *

It's afternoon and Harry finally locates the park where he remembers seeing men playing chess when he was young. Several of the tables are occupied, but a stoic, elderly man of Indian descent walks over to the final board. He unrolls a battered, vinyl chessboard and weathered chessmen and sets aside his wooden cane and grey woolen jacket. His eyebrows are thick and, like the rest of his hair, are frosted with white. Dark eyes flash over to Harry and he motions for the boy to sit.

Harry does. He plays white and he makes the opening move Ron taught him, to advance the queen's pawn one square. The man shakes his head slowly and then moves.

After several moves, Harry can sense that the experience is far different from playing Ron. Each move his opponent makes strengthens the man's position, with no wasted moves. Ten moves in, the other man goes on the offensive and Harry is hard pressed to avoid a loss. Twenty five moves into the game, Harry's situation is hopeless. Mercifully, he's checkmated soon afterward.

"That was particularly dismal, my friend," the man says.

Harry sighs. "I know. I have a friend in school who always beats me."

"Show me how."

Harry shows the man Ron's favorite opening, how he moves his queen into the middle of the board early and uses it like a bludger to beat up Harry's pieces. He describes as best as he can Ron's clever strategy to use a bishop and knight with the queen to deadly effect, leaving the other knight and bishop back as reinforcements.

The man listens and nods, his face impassive.

"If what you say is correct, then this friend of yours is not very good, perhaps a low-grade club player at best, but it sounds like he's not even that good," he says.

"But Ron's the best in the school!"

"Really? And how many students are in this school of yours that your friend has played?"

Harry thinks for a moment. Hogwarts is small, just like the Wizarding population, for that matter. Harry realizes that he doesn't remember seeing Ron ever play more than just a handful of people at school, mostly those he can beat easily. He starts to wonder just how good Ron really is at chess and whether the bravado is deserved.

"I guess you're right, mister..."

"Sriram. You may call me Sriram, Mr. Potter."

"How did you know?"

"I recognized your picture. I believe you know my granddaughters. One was a Gryffindor this year..."

"Parvati and Padma!"

"Indeed. Now let me show you how to play this game correctly. You and I will meet every other day this summer for a lesson..."

* * *

From this auspicious start, Harry receives his first of many chess lessons from his mentor, whom he later learns is an International Master, a category of highly rated chess players.

From the man, Harry learns the principles of the opening, how one must develop quickly and efficiently. He learns of the general equality of tempo, position, and material.

He learns tactical patterns--forks, skewers, pins, pivots, discovered attacks, double attacks, and sacrifices. He learns to set up intricate means by which to exploit these tactics.

He learns to play sharp games that require precision and acumen, as well as methodical, positional games, where one slowly squeezes one's opponent into submission.

For three weeks, Harry spends twenty-hour days learning and internalizing how to win endgames. This proves to be one of the most miserable experiences of his life, yet one of the most gratifying when he's finished.

He joins several chess clubs, giving him a place to play opponents of a variety of playing styles and ability levels every evening. Vernon is happy that he's out of sight and out of trouble, for once.

He brews dozens of wit sharpening potions on Aunt Petunia's stove top, but she doesn't need to know about that, nor of the purple crust on her counter top from a minor accident. It will never come clean.

He learns patience, how to bide his time for the optimal moment to strike, and he learns resolve and courage. When he does go the offensive, he is ruthless and fearless.

He learns that being with Padma and Parvati is rather fun and quite a lot different from spending time with Ron and Hermione. He finds he blushes a lot around them.

Harry learns how to organize his thoughts and to compartmentalize. Most importantly, he learns how to _learn_, to balance book knowledge and practical application so that he can make the most of his time. He realizes that this skill has applicability far beyond chess, to his studies and to life itself.

This revelation would make all the difference in the world.

* * *

Harry bids Sriram goodbye and catches a bus to the station at platform nine and three quarters, arriving a full ninety minutes early. In his preoccupation, he has failed to notice several things--that none of his friends have communicated with him all summer, for instance. Or, that a touched-in-the-head House Elf has come to Privet Drive many times to warn him of danger at Hogwarts, but has left when Harry wasn't there. He misses a flying car that arrives to his empty bedroom to rescue him.

Ron is upset and chooses not to sit with Harry on the train while Hermione, after a mild scolding, accepts him once again. Ginny Weasley asks to sit with them and Harry accepts, but she spends the whole trip glancing at him and blushing. Harry doesn't know what to make of this.

Parvati and Padma join them in their compartment and the two sit on either side of Harry. Later that day, Harry works up the courage to hold Padma's hand. She gives him a kiss on the cheek before they disembark and they both blush.

* * *

"Okay, Harry, I'll allow you lose to me again," Ron announces grandly before everyone in the Gryffindor Common Room. Harry sees that his friend has a brand new Wizard's Chess set bought for him by his eldest brother after hearing of Ron's heroics the year prior.

"Sure, Ron, but I warn you that I've been practicing. I'm not quite as easy a mark as before."

Ron snorts. "Tell you what--I'll play without my queen the first game. Then we'll talk about your rubbish play."

"Okay."

They play and Harry throws the match, allowing Ron to race quickly to a winning position without his queen. Harry catches Hermione's eye and winks. Her eyebrows rise.

"Checkmate! Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!" Ron shouts, drawing the attention of the rest of Gryffindor. In his glee, he gives several people nearby high-fives.

"That was remarkable, Ron," Harry says. "It looks like having a queen may be bad. This time, let _me_ play without _my_ queen."

Ron laughs derisively. "Whatever Harry, it's your funeral."

They play.

The Gryffindors watch.

Pieces exchange.

Ron's head is in his hands.

Harry puts together a complex, five-move sacrifice, a moment of genius that ends with his rook on the back row attacking Ron's trapped king. It's a back-rank mate.

Amidst the cheers, Harry says innocently, "Gee, Ron. I guess playing with a queen really _is_ a disadvantage."

Ron's face is puce and Harry can tell he's about to blow up in rage.

"Tell you what," Harry says, placating the boy, but not really. "Let's play a third game, this one for some real stakes. You win, I'll give you my Nimbus 2000..."

"You know I don't have anything like that," Ron says hotly.

"I know. I win, I keep this nifty new chess set and you acknowledge me in front of the school tomorrow as the superior player."

Ron, in front of all of Gryffindor, has no choice but to swallow and accept Harry's terms.

Harry plays white and opens with a Danish Gambit, a sharp opening that punishes those who, like Ron, don't have the patience to develop. Ron accepts the gambit and soon finds himself woefully behind, his few pieces harried across the board or pinned, where they're picked off easily by Harry's. Harry, for his part, exploits the positional advantage to utterly crush Ron's defense.

Ron resigns before the hemorrhaging becomes too severe.

"Thank you for the game," Harry says, offering his hand.

Ron ignores him, instead standing quickly, knocking his chair back, and he pushes a first-year with a camera onto the floor on his way to the door. He hurls it open, slamming it against the wall, as his brother Percy, a prefect, shouts after him.

"I'm going to the Astronomy Tower, Percy. Leave me alone!"

Against his better judgment, Percy does, though he deducts points, as would be proper. One cannot show favoritism, after all.

It would be the last night Harry ever saw his friend.

* * *

Years later, after Harry defeats the Dark Lord Ginny once and for all, he looks back on the summer he learned chess as a happy time, one that gave him the power to persevere. It defined his life and equipped him to cope with the worst that could be thrown at him.

Harry and Padma Potter would have six children, all girls, save for the youngest, whom they named Ron in honor of Harry's late friend.

In an act which surprises everyone, Harry forbids his son, Ron, to ever learn chess.

Fin.


	6. TwoThirds Blood Prince

Inspired by the Reverse Severitus challenge on DLP, but modified to make it a little more weird. The italicized text is an excerpt from _Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince_ by J. K. Rowling, chapter 28, page 603-604. I do not own Harry Potter.

Thanks to Alpha Fight Club (particularly BennyS and Voice of the Nephilim) and the Dark Lord Potter forum for helpful comments.

* * *

**Two Thirds Blood Prince**

By Perspicacity

_Harry uttered an inarticulate yell of rage. In that instant, he cared not whether he lived or died. Pushing himself to his feet again, he staggered blindly toward Snape, the man he now hated as much as he hated Voldemort himself—_

"_Sectum--!" _

_Snape flicked his wand and the curse was repelled yet again; but Harry was mere feet away now and he could see Snape's face clearly at last: He was no longer sneering or jeering; the blazing flames showed a face full of rage. Mustering all his powers of concentration, Harry thought, Levi—_

"_No, Potter!" screamed Snape. There was a loud BANG and Harry was soaring backward, hitting the ground hard again, and this time his wand flew out of his hand. He could hear Hagrid yelling and Fang howling as Snape closed in and looked down on him where he lay, wandless and defenseless as Dumbledore had been. Snape's pale face, illuminated by the flaming cabin, was suffused with hatred just as it had been before he had cursed Dumbledore. _

"_You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them—I, the Half-Blood Prince_! _And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so…" _

"No!" Harry yelled, his eyes wide as memories he'd fought to bury come to the fore. The hooked nose the two shared was unmistakable. "It can't be—you're the bloody son of Eileen Prince!"

Snape snapped, "How do you know my mother, Potter?"

"The timing even works out--you were the same age as my father!"

Snape lowered his wand, the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips. "You have no idea how ironic your misguided ramblings are."

"What do you mean?"

"Think. In the dimness that passes for your consciousness, did you ever stop to wonder why I would permit you to keep my greatest treasure? Or did you simply believe that it was your right, like so many other things? Your arrogance knows no bounds, Potter. You're just like your _surrogate_ father."

"No!" Harry screamed, but his fury bled away when his potions professor cast a calming charm on him.

"Please do be quiet. I am your real father, Potter, a secret dear Lily took to her grave."

"But I look just like…"

"James? Suspiciously so, wouldn't you think? I remind you, your mother was a Potions Mistress. Brewing an elixir to modify an infant's appearance is child's play."

Harry started to say something, but words escaped him. Instead, he turned aside and vomited eloquently.

"It was the worst day of my life, you know. I was forced to ravish your mother as part of my initiation into the inner circle of Death Eaters. I was working for Dumbledore even then, however, and he required that I do it in order to maintain my cover."

"You raped my mother, you sick bastard!"

"She knew what I had to do and accepted it," Snape countered, not meeting Harry's eyes.

"Bloody rapist," Harry spat. "And you sold my mother to Voldemort too, you bastard!"

"At the time, I did not know to whom the prophecy referred. And before your Gryffindor tendencies impel you to pick up your wand and attempt another of my curses, I'll have you know that it sickened me to hurt her, despite her wretched taste in companions."

Harry spat bile out of his mouth and onto Snape's robes.

"And you should know that Dumbledore asked me to kill him."

"I don't believe it," Harry said through clenched teeth, his hatred peaking at levels where he knew the Cruciatus would succeed.

"I can prove it, but not at this time." Snape pivoted and shot a powerful banishing spell at Hagrid, who was charging. The half-giant flew into Buckbeak, knocking both unconscious.

Harry found his wand and stood facing his father. "Snape," he said, his voice cold. "There's something _you_ must know as well."

Snape sneered, confident he could deflect any spell the boy could muster. "Oh?"

"You may be my father, but I'm _your_ father too."

"Impossible."

"Not so. Just last week, I was trying to figure out what Draco was up to and I ran across a damaged Time Turner in the Room of Requirement. It took me back to a young Eileen Prince, who was being beaten by her Muggle husband. He hit me a few times with a fireplace poker...

"That _was_ one of Father's favorites." Snape shivered involuntarily.

"I almost killed him, but she begged me not to. Instead, I caught him across the face with a Sectumsempra. That was after I hit Draco with it, so I knew what it would do."

"Father had such a scar, yet he never spoke of how he received it. The livid, unhealing wound was what inspired me to craft the spell you used. " Snape pursed his lips for a moment. "This is a curiosity, Potter, but while you met my parents, that alone does not make you my father. Must I, as your father, explain to you where babies come from?"

Harry's face turned red. "Oh, I know that—they come from sex, which is what your dear Eileen was doing with me while I was knocked unconscious."

"If you were unconscious, then how did you know she did anything?"

"I woke up with her straddling me?"

"Oh." Snape had an expression on his face as if he were eating something very sour.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Harry said, his face bearing a matching expression of disgust. "I was a virgin too, up until then anyway--hardly the 'first time' I had imagined."

"As was I before Lily," Snape muttered to himself.

Harry's sensitive ears picked it up, though. "You're kidding—you were in your twenties! At least I had an excuse. I was sixteen."

Snape glared at his son… father… whatever.

Harry continued to speak. "I confronted her about it afterward. Tobias Snape couldn't father children and she saw this as her only chance to have the family she'd wanted. I guess I couldn't blame her, given how horrible her life was."

"No wonder Father hated me so."

"So what's this make us?" Harry asked as Hagrid's hut exploded in a massive fireball.

Snape sighed. "I cannot believe a child of mine is unable to do simple arithmetic. If I am your father and you are mine and Lily and my mother are our mothers, respectively, than it's trivial to work out."

"So why don't you?" Harry asked, knowing the man hadn't done so yet.

"That's what I was doing when you caused me to stop and insult you, you imbecile! If I'm half you and half my mother and you're half me and half Lily…" Snape's eyes rolled back as he did some mental arithmetic. "Then I am one third Lily and two thirds my mother."

"Which would make you the Two Thirds Blood Prince."

Snape nodded.

"And that would make me a third-blood wizard, not a half-blood, since I'm one-third Eileen, who was a pureblood, and two thirds my mother," Harry said, doing his own calculations.

"Indeed."

"So we're… half brothers or something?" Harry asked.

"Hardly. Use your brain, you dunderhead. Half brothers are only one fourth the same."

"Oh. So we're more like brothers then, except we're each the other's father. And son."

"Exactly," Snape said.

"And since sisters are only half the same as well, we each had sex with our two-thirds sister."

The two stood in silence for a pregnant moment.

"This is pretty fucked up," Harry said.

"You're telling me," Snape grumbled.

"I'm going to call you 'great grandson' now, you know."

"Do that and I will disown you."

"Now who's the fool--you can't disown your ancestors."

"But I can a wayward son. I'll find a way, Potter, trust me."

"I'm sure you will." Harry raised his wand and pointed it at the other man. "Until then, _son_, I'll have you know that you disappoint me. Rape, murder, falling in with the worst sort of people... you'd better not let me catch you out after curfew, young man, or we're going to have words!"

Somehow, beneath a sky lit green with the Dark Lord's mark, with the greatest hero the Light had produced dead at his hand and portions of Hogwarts ablaze, the absurdity of the moment caught up with the older man. Snape tossed his head back and laughed for the first time in decades.

Such an unnatural sight would live with Harry for the rest of his days. He almost didn't notice as his son Disapparated.

"At least your two-thirds sister was hot," Harry groused.

Fin.


	7. Three Drabbles

A few extended drabbles, one of which is holiday themed. They're nothing special and are posted here primarily for archival purposes. I still don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

**Conspiracy**

God, I hated the hospital. Damned place stank like Mione's lab and they made you wait forever.

"Mr. Weasley?"

"Call me Ron." I gave her a wink--the nurse was a looker.

"Come this way, Mr. Weasley." I followed her, checking her out. Hey, I'm still a guy--as long as I don't touch, right? She had a decent ass, but it was hard to tell with the robes. Her top was a bit flat for my tastes, though. She led me into an examining room to see a healer, finally.

A few minutes passed as he poked at me with his wand. Poofter.

"Doc. What's up?" I wiggled one of my front teeth with my tongue. Ruddy thing was loose--the sixth one that day!

"I'm sorry, Mr. Weasley. We've seen a lot of these cases among Ministry employees." The guy was old and had twenty years and four stone on Dad. I thought healers were supposed to be healthy? The tosser wore Percy-specs and probably eats runny cheese too.

"So, you can fix it, right?" I don't fancy gumming Christmas Dinner. Seems all my teeth started to fall out the day before. I'd have suspected George, but ol' "dead eyes" hadn't pranked since Fred died.

"I'm afraid not. We only just isolated the culprit. It appears there's an infestation of some sort of new creature. We're calling them 'nargles.'"

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I wish I were. We suspect they live in mistletoe and seem to be semi-intelligent." He took his time scribbling something onto his clipboard. I bet it was just for show just to make him seem more important; the guy had Percy's "Ghost of Christmas Future" written all over him.

"Let me guess--only Minstry personnel are affected?" He nodded. "And they're all losing their teeth like me?"

"That's a fair assumption."

The Rotfang Conspiracy. Bloody Hell! Loony was right all along!

* * *

**Ravenclaws**

"Li, do you have a moment?"

Su Li rolled her eyes and closed a tome as large as she was. Dust scattered about the library. "What, Cho? I have a History of Magic essay due in a week, you know."

"Have you ever wondered why the Sorting Hat only puts the Asian students in Ravenclaw? I looked it up and in the history of Hogwarts, only Padma's sister has gone to another house."

"I don't have to wonder. I know." The girl's cheeks dimpled smugly in authentic Ravenclaw fashion.

Cho glared as she waited for her diminutive housemate to continue.

"The answer is obvious," Su Li said. "Well, it is to me, anyway."

Cho grumbled and slumped into the chair.

"Are you sure you truly belong in our house, Chang, I mean, aside from your being Asian? I guess I could just say it, but it'd just be so _Gryffindor_ to want the easy way out..."

"Fine." Cho folded her arms and pursed her lips as she mulled over the problem. A minute later, she affected a smile. "Thanks, it really was obvious after all!" she chirped and bounced out of the Library.

Su Li sighed and muttered under her breath, "Pity she didn't tell me."

* * *

**Hats**

Dobby is cleaning Gryffindor Common Room and Dobby is finding another hat! Today is a good day for Dobby. Dobby followed former master into Come and Go room. Dobby also showed Bad Kreacher how a good Elf serves Harry Potter.

Dobby thinks Kreacher is Bad Elf. Dobby cleans fast because Dobby is not trusting Bad Elf to follow former master.

Dobby is finding knickers, but Dobby does not wear knickers because they are smallest Wheezy's knickers. Dobby knows knickers do not belong in boy's truck. Dobby will clean Wheezy's knickers and put knickers in smallest Wheezy's trunk.

Dobby sees Wheezy with Wheezy's Dean. Dobby sees Wheezy and the bad boy doing things. Dobby knows Harry Potter would not like smallest Wheezy doing things. Dobby does not tell Harry Potter. Dobby does not like Harry Potter being sad.

Dobby knows Harry Potter, the greatest wizard in the world, is liking treacle tarts. He is also liking smallest Wheezy, but smallest Wheezy is with other boy, doing naughty touching things, and Harry Potter would not be happy.

Dobby watches as Harry Potter is drinking golden potion. Dobby sees Harry Potter not sad. Dobby is being happy. Dobby pops to speak with Harry Potter, but Dobby is forgetting to become visible to wizards. Bad boy trips on Dobby and pushes into Wheezy as Harry Potter goes away. Dobby sees bad boy fight with Wheezy, so Dobby goes to clean someplace else.

Dobby thinks Harry Potter is the greatest wizard in the world. Harry Potter is liking treacle tarts and his smallest Wheezy. Smallest Wheezy has given up her Dean. Dobby thinks Harry Potter and smallest Wheezy will do touching things together.

Dobby is putting Wheezy's knickers in Harry Potter's trunk instead.


	8. Starship Troopers

"Rico, you're wanted back at HQ," Jelly barks. The Captain's voice cuts through the chaos of the backwater dive in that special way known only to former drill sergeants.

It's something big is if he's chasing me down on my R&R. An officer, even a popular one with a field commission simply doesn't intrude on the sacred downtime of the MI noncom, which involves a chance to sleep late, chase girls, scratch himself, and maybe Waltz Matilda with a few Navy apes in order to educate them with meaty fists on what real service looks like.

"Captain?" I ask, mucking my hand and slipping into my Mobile Infantry field jacket. I only had two pair anyway. To my left, Bunny, one of my Lances, is holding treys or better, judging by how he's gnawing on his swizzle. The kid's tells are so obvious it's painful, but he makes up for it with uncanny luck.

I knock back half of Bunny's beer and pat him on the head. He flips me a salute that's not quite textbook.

I follow the Captain outside and we walk out of there in silence. Old soldiers don't have to chatter to keep our mouths busy and our brains idle. We instinctively fall into step—again, old habits. The civilians we pass nod respectfully. One's a gorgeous girl with curves that should be illegal. I smile to her, as pleasantly as a professional killer can, and she smiles back. Almost. I get points for trying, anyway.

Things are good on Sanctuary, about as homey a place you can find in the 'Verse, now that Earth's been turned into a radioactive wasteland and Mars has ceased to be.

You almost can forget the war going on outside. You know, the one we're losing.

We pass the old OCS campus and I smell honeysuckle. Harridan memories return like pregnant ex-girlfriends. I'd forgotten how much I'd hated this stuck-up hellhole.

Now that's a story, me in OCS. The last time I'd looked through the antiqued fences at the manicured lawns and white-washed buildings was just after I'd chucked my third lieutenant's bars on the Commandant's desk. They were borrowed, of course—nobody buys those microscopic pips—in my case, the eighth consecutive failure on that particular set. I'd foolishly taken them on as a personal favor for the man. They were his, apparently, back when dinosaurs roamed and the Bugs didn't automatically kick our asses every time we met. I think the old man was secretly hoping I'd buy the farm, so at least I'd break his streak by being buried with a commission.

What I got for the headaches and the half dozen drops I made as the most supernumerary officer in the whole expurgated battalion were a couple commendations for heroics and a service medal I can't wear with noncom dress maroons. Oh, and a note in my file from Acting-Captain-salute-the-asshole Oliver Rosa, stating that I was a "loose cannon with no business leading grade school kids across the street, much less a platoon into battle." Whatever. Punching the idiot's lights out was righteous and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It was his cockup, after all, that led to the Captain's paying retail back on Cassiopeia Nine.

It was the second time I'd gotten the lash for insubordination. Hey, not many still in the Service can make that claim.

Why'd I do it, sign up to click my heels as a right _Proper Gentleman_? That's a long story, but the gist of it is that when you're new to the MI, you step up with an eager "Sir, yes sir!" and take a swing when they ask you to—and on the bounce too, you dirty apes! I was young then, dumb and full of cum, bucking for officer before I'd even worn Sergeant chevrons a week. Hell, Jelly knew I'd do it once I declared as a career man. He even had the paperwork signed. God, I was so naïve.

We pass through the first layers of security and make our way toward the command compound, a dozen temp-buildings ringing an ugly, sprawling brick structure.

Jelly pulls me aside just before we enter. "Watch yourself, Rico. This place has been thick with Intel personnel and the only thing I've been told is the Colonel wants you here to brief you on a special mission."

"Golly, how thoughtful," I deadpan, nodding to my Captain that I'd gotten the message. Old Jelly's instincts are good and my noncom senses are tingling too. No full bird would involve himself in something like this if it were routine. I like routine. Routine doesn't have me staying up late helping the Cap'n wire "We regret to inform you…" letters to a squad who bought the farm because of a cock-up we didn't see coming.

Jelly continues in a gruff voice. "Out of every MI in the 'Verse, you were recommended for this job, special orders coming down from the Sky Marshal. I also got word from your teacher friend back home. He pulled strings to get you in on this, Johnnie. It's big. My gut says maybe 'survival of the human race' big."

Jelly was rarely excessively dramatic. If he said it was serious stuff, it was.

"Great," I say with false bravado. "They want me. Tell me this isn't a sign that we're winning this war?"

He sighs. "Not even close. I could quote troop numbers, but Alpha Nine, or what's left of it, should clue you in on how bad things are. Whatever that Oort anomaly was, it turned the tide of this war."

"Above my pay grade to worry about such things, Cap'n."

"Well, perhaps you should."

We arrive at the Colonel's door. Jelly knocks and the XO opens it. I'm sent in with a pat on the back that feels much more like a push.

* * *

I stand at attention before my commander as the Colonel ignores me, instead leafing through the folder on his desk. After some pleasantries that are anything but, we're been left alone and the heat is stifling. It's going to be a chew-out session then, make me sweat a little, put me off my guard, whatever. I've had worse.

"Johnnie Rico, Career Sergeant. Parents deceased. Enlisted at 17. Mediocre placement scores. Selected for Mobile Infantry. Basic at Camp Currie. Wildcats, Roughnecks, OCS, Third Lieutenant for fourteen weeks, but failed to receive a commission after a Court Martial. Busted to Private. Purported to be a ruthless warrior. Training includes battle suit mechanics, field medic, demolition, every weapon system from pea shooter to a tactical nuke… bartending?"

"It's a calling, sir."

"I see. A long list of commendations. An even longer list of civilian and military arrests and a penchant for bucking authority. That about cover it?"

"Yes sir!" I chirp. I don't like reliving my past and I'd learned long ago that excessive obedience is more annoying in a dress-down than combativeness.

He reads some more and clears his throat dramatically.

"Am I to understand that you have in your possession a Blackbird suit."

Oh, fuck-game's up.

Through a bizarre turn of events involving trading in about a million favors, several through Father's military-industrial connections, I'd managed to get my hands on the hottest and sweetest piece of tech in existence. Hell, it was an orgasm distilled into nano and top-shelf AI. A mech. suit to end all suits, one of only a dozen ever made and the only one I know of still in service. Whispered about with reverence on essentially every ship in the Service, the Blackbird is special.

I'd disguised mine as a retro Command suit, similar to the ones deployed a decade ago to Flag officers in the field. I was known in the ranks as a bit of an eccentric with a bit of money behind my name, so my fielding a Flag Commander's suit wouldn't raise too many eyebrows. It let me to hide my treasure in plain sight.

"That's a mighty unlikely thing to suggest, Colonel," I say unconvincingly.

"Is it now," he says, his eyes narrowing.

Shit. Just the schematics on _guidance_ are considered Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information. The thing cost more than a Centaur-class Starship. Made with the most advanced tech, she was so instinctual as to seem alive—more so than most of my soldiers, even. Worse, we couldn't even produce the stuff anymore—not after the cryo labs on Pluto, where my childhood friend Carl was stationed, were wiped out early in the Bug War.

Yeah, the suit's a she. I named her Pele, after the Hawaiian goddess of fire and she's probably the only girl I ever truly loved. Keeping her secrets is the reason I've always managed to wheedle myself into the spot as resident suit mechanic on any ship I serve.

The Colonel lowers his voice to barely above a whisper and I realize know why we're alone. "Hypothetically speaking, Sergeant Rico, if you were to have had in your possession such a suit—ownership of which is a capital crime, I remind you—how long might you have worked with it?"

I take in his look. Despite the ominous words, he doesn't have the appearance of a commander about to order a firing squad.

I cough into my hand. "Since we're still speaking hypothetically, Sir, I maybe had the suit for, oh, eleven years? Twelve? It's hard to tell, spending so much time on ships. At least a hundred drops."

He pushes back from his desk and stares at me intently. "I see. Again hypothetically, might extended use of such a suit have led it to enhance and adapt itself to your style of fighting, perhaps developing a sort of… initiative?"

"Funny you should mention that. Again, speaking purely of conjecture, such a suit may have even become self-aware, capable of functioning autonomously after its operator has been knocked unconscious. A suit like that would be a special thing, a real asset to your ranks."

"Remarkable." He returns to a speaking voice, one that's laced with authority—a trick I never quite learned when I tried playing officer. "Okay, let's get down to it. We're building an elite force, Rico, to hit the Bugs in the testicles, if they had them. It's risky, but if we pull it off, we end this goddamned war. It's crazy, almost guaranteed to fail, but something tells me that you may be just the kind of crazy we're looking for."

"This a voluntary thing, Sir?"

"I'd like it that way. You're going to be put under hypnotic triggers to avoid sharing info either way."

I consider the blackmail he's got on me. Hell, I don't have a choice.

"Aye, sir. I'll do it."

A side door opens and a man walks in. His hair is shock white, cropped short in a military cut. He's shorter than me, slight of build, and looks like he's about seventy. The man has brilliant green eyes and more than a few scars, including a nasty one on his forehead. He's dressed in a military uniform, but without rank.

"Mister Potter here will explain the details."

* * *

The plot bunny of a Starship Troopers/Harry Potter crossover. I own neither _Harry Potter_ (owned by J. K. Rowling) nor _Starship Troopers_ (owned by the estate of the late Robert Heinlein). Written for pleasure, not profit, I make no money from this. (In other words, my Porsche was paid for by my day job).

Some thoughts on direction for this:

Voldemort's final horcrux was the song Johnny B. Goode, sent on a golden phonograph record on one of the Voyager missions. (Fuck you very much, LessWrong-I've had "make something on Voyager into a horcrux" in my file of plot bunny ideas for more than two years now).

Dark times fall post-Voldemort and desperate measures are taken. Eventually, an adult Harry Potter is imprisoned unfairly in solitary confinement in Azkaban, the sole prisoner there. It's the only prison capable of holding him.

Through a somewhat surprising turn of events, Hermione, his lover, crafts a horcrux, leaving a portion of her soul in Dumbledore's pensieve, which Harry is permitted to bring with him into prison. It's charmed to allow him to use it for an hour a day. (Allowing him to keep his sanity is deemed a more cruel punishment than not; also, the Ministry doesn't know the true nature of the device). Harry can visit Hermione every night. While in the pensieve, sees through the eyes of her physical self and watches history unfold.

In the meantime, the Starship Troopers military takeover of the world happens. It's bloodless for the most part, save for the near elimination of the magical worlds. All that remains are a few, pressed into service and permitted to practice only the mind arts-seers and mind-readers. The latter are the ones who practice the ESP in Starship Troopers.

Hermione, as a leader of the resistance, is tortured, then publicly executed by firing squad, all of which Harry witnesses. He has no love for the Federation.

Because of his ties to Voldemort, Harry finds he cannot die of natural causes. Four hundred years pass, his only company his nightly visits to the fragment of Hermione's soul in the pensieve.

In time, the enchantments fall on Azkaban and Terran soldiers take the island, seizing him and the pensieve in the process.

Unfortunately, it's learned in the aftermath that one of the honorary titles Harry holds is Mage Protector of the Realm. The opportunistic Terran military leaders use this loophole/grandfather clause to press him into service in their Bug Wars, which have taken a turn for the really crappy in the past few years. Harry Potter is the only conscript in the entire Terran force.

Voldemort's horcrux had managed to be picked up in the Oort cloud by the bugs. He infests them, wreaking a terrible revenge upon humanity. Their hive-mind is ripe for take-over.

Harry and a highly disenchanted Rico are to become the core of a small group who take the fight to Voldemort/Bug Central. It's military science fiction with a touch of magic. Cynicism and ruthlessness. Inglorious Basterds, indeed.


	9. Negotiations

Author's Notes: Thanks again to Alpha Fight Club for all their help. I don't own Harry Potter.

This piece was originally submitted to the DLP July "Politics" writing contest, though it seems there was a minor problem with the judging and so I've withdrawn it from competition and posted it here. On a technical, rhetorical note, a colleague who is a much better stylist than I suggested that I play around with adding sentences in the cumulative syntax to my otherwise unimpressive, periodic prose. I don't know if it worked as well as I'd hoped, but it was a useful exercise nonetheless.

Summary: I've always been intrigued by Hermione's comments to Ron and Harry on the train, that she'd tried lots of spells and all of them had worked for her. What if the Ministry were not so forgiving regarding her illegal magic use outside of school?

* * *

**Negotiations**

by Perspicacity

"This way please, Mister Potter."

"Thank you, ma'am," Harry says as he nods to the smartly dressed administrative assistant, a woman on the edge of middle age, with makeup generously applied, yet tastefully done, conservatively dressed and easy on the eyes at a first glance, the only glance she can expect to receive as someone who knows she's ornamental, destined to blend into the modern office background and be forgotten amidst pastels and cubicles and phones with rows of speed-dial buttons. Hers is an office smile, sterile and devoid of emotion, with the knowledge that he's well on the way to having forgotten her already. He enters through the door and it closes behind him with a mute click. He regards his surroundings carefully, an ingrained Auror habit; it's lowly lit, a moderately sized meeting room with a large, oval-shaped, "I'm here for business" table in austere, dark hardwood. The walls are a color jammed between brown and blood and hold black-and-white photographs in pencil-thin frames, picture arranged in geometric perfection that seem like they should be moving, but are in stasis, a tension that has frozen the inevitability of decay, as if mirroring Muggle England itself.

The Prime Minister, a stately dame with iron-colored hair and a matching temperament, stands opposite Harry on the other side of The Table. She is flanked by two assistants, the one to her right being a balding, elderly gentleman with heavy jowls and a rounded back; Harry recognizes him from the tele as her Chief of Staff, the kind of experienced politician and displaced barbarian who has vanquished enough enemies to be bored of it all; the other is a brunette in her early forties, roughly the same age as Harry, whose face is beginning to crease at its corners from wearing a habitual frown. She peers at him, her brown eyes squinting beneath slightly heavy eyebrows, and he feels a feathery touch on his Occlumancy shields.

"Mister Potter, thank you for meeting with us on such short notice," the Prime Minster says, extending her hand across the table in a grand, almost pompous gesture, that of a Soviet Premiere greeting gawking Westerners before a line of cameras. Harry grasps it, forgetting whether she offered it with the thumb downward or upward. He shakes it as he would upon meeting a male colleague. He's botching the etiquette, he's sure, but he doesn't recall the protocol and, besides, he was called here on very short notice after a bloody long day. Had they wanted polite, they shouldn't be asking for an Auror.

"It's my pleasure," he says and bows awkwardly. "And congratulations on your election. As you may know from your predecessor, it's customary for someone from our world to brief each new Prime Minister."

The Prime Minister shares a significant look with her Chief and her body lapses into a pose like a siege defense. "Indeed. However, because of a change in my calendar, I shall have to take my leave. I'm sure that we'll be in touch in the future. In the meantime, my assistant, Miss Granger, will act as my representative. She speaks with the authority of my office and has been granted latitude to negotiate terms on behalf of our government."

The woman's words sound ominous. "Ma'am, this is unusual. Our Statue of Secrecy…"

"Applies neither to me nor to my staff." The Prime Minister's tone that brooks no further discussion. "Good day, Mister Potter."

"Er, right. Good day, ma'am," Harry says as the woman and the older gentleman depart. The room seems to sigh as they go, the tension abated, though only somewhat.

"Miss Granger," Harry says, smiling as warmly as he can under the circumstances.

She nods at him coolly and sits, scooting her chair forward so that the fronts of her armrests scoot beneath the table surface. She leans forward and gestures to the chair opposite hers. "Please, have a seat. I've read about you, though I always thought you'd be taller."

Harry nods and obliges, sliding into a leather chair that makes flesh-on-flesh rubbing noises as he sits. He backs away from the table a bit as the woman tents her fingers and gives him a calculating look. He feels another light brush across his Occlumency shields, almost like a puff of air blown into his fringe. He raises an eyebrow. She has at least a latent talent in magic, it would seem, something which no doubt has helped her Muggle career. While such a wild talent is uncommon, it would not have been unheard of for it to go unnoticed and untrained, especially back then, when the Ministry was preoccupied with Voldemort's second rise and matters of Muggleborn inclusion into their world were decidedly less comprehensive than they are now.

He wonders idly whether she's even aware of what she's been doing.

Not one to leave such mysteries unplumbed, he delivers a riposte like a snap, a sharp counterthrust of Legilimancy that gashes her rudimentary shields, delving hard and fast into her brain, filling it with the sprawling intrusion of his mind in hers, as if he's uninvited company sprawled out upon her sofa with his smelly socks propped up on her embroidered, ornamental pillows. After making his presence in her mind known, he issues a cerebral yawn and backs out of her head, a smirk tugging on his lips.

"You're a witch," he says with a bit of ceremony, less a question than a statement.

"No," the woman replies, rubbing at her forehead. She bites her lower lip in thought. "But I could have been one once, perhaps."

"So you know of our world?"

"I know a few things that I've picked up over the years." Her tone shifts back to the formal one she had been using before and though she's adroit at hiding it, Harry notices something hidden in the woman's expression, a deeply buried pain. She continues briskly, "And I'm sure I'll be learning many others, things your people have kept from Her Majesty's Government. That will all be changing, of course..."

"Changing? How?"

She leans back in her chair with a leathery creak. "The autonomy of your world is obsolete, an anachronism in this twenty first century. Indeed, we've known of the happenings in your world for some time and we've been able to place agents to help monitor events in your world and prepare ourselves."

"Prepare? For what?"

There is a respite as she takes a deep breath, mulling what to say next, having noticed that her earlier words have tumbled from her mouth a little too quickly. "We'll get to that in a moment," Miss Granger says evasively.

"First I've heard of it," Harry says. "And if it's such a secret, I can't help but wonder why you're telling me of this now."

"We'll get to too that in a moment. Suffice it to say, and pardon me for being blunt, but your profile suggests that it's your way of handling matters, but we, and by that I mean the rightful government of Britain, have determined that your Ministry is to be disbanded and reorganized in a manner consistent with the governance of the nonmagical world. I have been asked to head up this reorganization."

He coughs, covering up a snort. "I'm sorry?"

"You think I'm joking?" She appears less than amused.

"No, I believe you're serious and that you think yourself capable of carrying out what you say. However, this sounds a more like an ultimatum than a negotiation and if this is where this is going, then you should be talking to the Minister of Magic. I'm just an Auror. I'm no diplomat. I'm not authorized to speak on behalf of our Ministry."

She shrugs. "Authorized or not, Head Auror, it hardly matters. As of an hour ago, your government was deemed obsolete and standing in opposition to the rightful government of Britain. This cannot be permitted, as I'm sure you understand."

"Who decided?"

"The Prime Minister, in concert with Her Majesty."

"On the basis of what, your admittedly incomplete knowledge of our world? Doesn't that strike you as premature?"

"We had enough information to make a decision and we thought it doubtful that anything you would say would change our minds on this matter. We are acting as we speak to take steps to resolve this matter posthaste."

Harry's body tenses and he feels the familiar burn of his magic humming in his ears. "By 'act', what, exactly, are you planning to do?"

The woman shrugs, a casual gesture carefully controlled, seeming anything but casual. "What we must, and do sit down. It has already begun."

Harry is a little surprised to notice that indeed he's on his feet with his wand out. He sits angrily.

Miss Granger continues, "I'm surprised this insurrection of yours was allowed to continue for as long as it has. I suspect our predecessors simply wished to avoid involving themselves with matters such as your little terrorist uprising."

"Little uprising? You're talking about Voldemort, the Dark Lord?"

"Yes. You defeated him yourself, did you not? You were, what was it again, the 'Boy Who Lived'?"

"I had help, but yes, I defeated him," Harry says quietly, memories of that ugly time coming to the fore, a time when his innocence was bled and burned on the pyre of self-sacrifice, a bloody offering to the callous gods of fate.

"You killed him, this Tom Riddle."

Harry nods.

Miss Granger grins predatorily. "Pardon my asking, but on whose authority did you take his life? Your ministry had been compromised at that point, if I'm not mistaken, and you were undoubtedly acting extralegally."

Harry's face feels hot and he rages inside at the woman's supercilious tone. He speaks, his words heavy, ugly things that increase in volume as he says them. "I was facing a madman bent on taking over the world and who had the means to do so. Had we not, had _I_not, the war would have spilled into the Muggle world. Hell, the bloody affair had already claimed several casualties on both sides by that point, and you, no doubt, would have had trouble hiding from it." His hand balls into a tight fist about his wand. "It was a hideous time, a black period of our history that some would like to forget. That some can't forget. We still haven't recovered."

"Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying it was wrong to do, just that it was unauthorized. We cannot condone vigilantes, as I'm sure you understand."

Harry snorts, crossing his arms. "I'd remind you that your predecessor at the time did, in fact, validate our actions, at least as far as he allowed himself to know about them. And he commended our service to the Crown afterward, so it's fair to say that our actions were 'condoned.' You won't get far with, what, trying to prosecute me for premeditated murder?"

"It's an option we've considered, depending on how this meeting proceeds, though one we'd obviously wish to avoid. You are a man of several talents, Mister Potter, and you have other uses to us. This 'war' as you call it had at the time claimed the lives of a few thousands of nonmagical people and caused billions pounds of damages and lost revenues, yet you did not seek out our help. Why is that?"

"Why ask me? I was just a boy trying to do what I could to save my friends and the world. I had quite a lot on my plate and to be honest, I doubt anyone in your government at the time would have listened to me anyway. Besides, what could you have done?"

"A great deal, as it turns out. Even then, we had agents in place in your world, just as you had infiltrated our own office - and yes, we knew about your spies, who were hardly as inconspicuous as you may have thought – yet, despite the grave ramifications for our world, you allowed nonmagical people to perish as collateral damage in your little 'war'. Would you not agree that this negligence is more evidence of how little your kind regard ours? Another example, perhaps, of your sick fascination with bloodlines?"

"Hold on," Harry says, fighting a desire to lash out against this woman and her smarmy, sanctimonious tone. "That's unfair. We've always worked with your government. We've always kept you apprised of matters of importance to both of our worlds. Hell, I even answered your summons today immediately..."

Miss Granger leans forward and her mouth is a puckered rictus, as if she's eating something bitter. "I'll be honest, Mister Potter. Your kind disgusts me. You oppose every principle of decent, modern society…"

"Rubbish."

"You enslave sentient beings," Miss Granger says, ticking off the points on her fingers, her words coming rapidly and rhythmically, as if rehearsed several times before a mirror. "This society of yours is discriminatory and undemocratic. You imprison without trial. You torture. Your prisons are a travesty and your schools, a disaster. Your monetary and banking systems are archaic and unregulated. Your government is rife with graft. You haven't paid a penny in taxes to the Crown in centuries—"

"Historical exception," Harry objects, then mutters, "or at least that's what we learned in school."

"How quaint. Though are you aware that like the royalty, your exception extends only to inheritances, that you still are liable for property, income, and corporate taxes?"

"I didn't, but again, I'm an Auror, not a politician."

"A convenient oversight. You were raised in our world, were you not?"

"I was."

"Then you, just as those like you with exposure to our world, should have familiarity with the laws of taxation. 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse,' as your kind is so quick to point out on matters of, say, underage magic use. I would think that this standard is doubly appropriate for one such as you, a celebrated leader of your community."

"I fail to see the relevance."

"Indeed. Have you not, by now, wondered why we enquired after you specifically?"

Harry's eyes narrow and his words, when they come, are laced with acid. "I have, and I hope I'm wrong."

"We intend to make use of you. Your influence will sway a large plurality of wizards, possibly a majority to our cause, enabling us to swiftly dismantle your ossified and backward society. This, we hope, will bring a quick and relatively painless conclusion to matters."

"And if I refuse?"

"You could attempt to fight us, I suppose, but I don't recommend you try it. There are all manner of… accidents that could befall those closest to you. We do have quite the tidy network and I remind you, they are, as we speak, in place and prepared to act immediately."

Harry stands, furious. Miss Granger stares back at his drawn wand sublimely.

"Try it, Potter. Test your feeble magical powers against our best Muggle scientists' technology. Attempt the spell that I know you want to cast and by this same technology you eschew I'll have security here in seconds ready to render you to one of our more liberal 'allies' whose notions of the appropriateness of physical torture mirror those of your own backward society. Please, by all means, do it."

"You bitch."

She studies her fingernails, a tiny smile on her lips, foreign and foul, a spider on a cake. "Three children and a beautiful wife Ginevra, who will never know what has befallen you. Such a pity."

Harry clenches his teeth and closes his eyes, gathering his will about him. There is a moment when nothing happens, yet at another level, everything does, as he opens himself to the magic within him. The light about his body seems to bend, as if caught in a mirage, and a sinuous black wisp slithers and writhes, snaking its way up his body even as the lamps above begin to flicker ominously, sputtering like a candle in an evening rain, and almost beneath hearing, a low rumbling sound begins, cressendoing, growing hale and heavy, growing. Perspiration beads on Harrys brow, soaking the collar of his shirt, and his mouth pulls into a rictus of exertion. There's a feeling that something is about to give. And then, suddenly, it does, ending with the sound of glass breaking in the distance.

When Harry opens his eyes, they are glowing, ugly points of green in the darkness cloaking him and his mouth is a manic grin, almost a feral baring of teeth. When he speaks, his voice has the timbre of something not of this world, an undercurrent of ineffable power. "You should not be so confident in your ability to dictate terms, Granger. Wizards, when pushed, push back. You're likely to find that we're not quite as helpless as you think."

He raises his wand and wills his magic to manifest. It responds instantly, the tip of his wand glowing with a globe of sinister green light matching his eyes.

"And your files should say this about me: _nobody_threatens my family."

Miss Granger's eyes widen, but her composure is elastic, recovering in a half-second. "Hurt me, Potter, and the order goes out. Our people will storm your Ministry and Diagon Alley, authorized for deadly force. We _will_ dismantle your world, with or without you, by gunpoint and RPG if we must, and before you think to try to Oblivate me, know that this conversation is being recorded and broadcast into another room. The Prime Minister has seen it all, including your overtly hostile response to our very reasonable terms."

"Reasonable terms," Harry says laughing bitterly. Then he slashes his wand at the door, causing it to vanish entirely, replaced by a black and white photograph of a squat creature with long ears and a pencil-thin nose. "Then let me make a 'reasonable' counter offer. To your Prime Minister, let me say this: if you harm my family, bitch, I swear your world will burn by my hand. I've put my life on the line, Hell, I risked my immortal soul protecting our world and yours from Dark Wizards and a Dark Lord. I will not stand here to be lectured by an ignorant hedge witch with a fancy title and delusions of grandeur."

"That's your official position?" Granger asks.

"No, a personal one – and a promise. The government can fend for itself."

"I see. Then we are at an impasse." Miss Granger tents her fingers again.

Harry sits roughly, a malicious glint in his eye. "No. I think we are merely at the initial stages of a 'negotiation,' as you call it. We've each taken a measure of the other. You've had the opportunity to test your magic nullifying equipment on one of our more skilled wizards, a boon for you. I, on the other hand, learned enough of your capabilities that we'll be ready for you next time. You managed to learn how far I'll go to protect my own, which isn't much of a concession on my part, since it's common knowledge, and I learned something much more important: I learned enough of your plans to put an end to them and I learned the composition of this administration and the petty motivations of those whom it employs."

"Really," she says incredulously, her finger nervously teasing the end of a lock of bushy hair.

"A wise man and mentor taught me the value of learning the 'whys' of things, something that's served me well over the years. Why the hostility toward our world? Why is yours is the first government in memory to threaten war with us?"

"And just how did you manage that?"

Harry taps his forehead. "If you're going to practice the mind arts, Granger, you should learn to guard your thoughts."

The amusement vanishes from the woman's face.

"Shall we share this with your Prime Minister, who you say is listening? It's a lovely story, though one that is not especially flattering for you. Once there was a girl named Hermione who learned on her eleventh birthday that she was a witch and that she would have the privilege of attending the premier school of magic in Europe."

"No." Miss Granger's face drains of color.

"Oh yes. Little Hermione acquired her wand and schoolbooks and she just _couldn't wait_to learn magic. She was given a stern warning not to practice outside of school, a warning she thought obviously shouldn't apply to someone as clever as she, and though she tried to obey, one night the temptation got the best of her and she retrieved the wand her parents had hidden for her own good. Her first spell, a Lumos, was successful, which incidentally is quite remarkable. Most of us take a lot longer to learn magic. It was also, unfortunately, her last."

"Stop!"

"An Obliviator paid her family a visit that night. Her new wand was snapped and her books and magical items were vanished. But that wasn't the worst of it, was it?"

"Damn you."

"The man abused her mother in front of her and laughed off the woman's struggles, saying some rubbish about it being his due, that as a Pureblood, Muggles and Mudbloods were beneath him and bereft of rights. He also said it wouldn't matter anyway, since they wouldn't remember anything."

Hermione bolts to her feet. "Get out!"

"He botched the memory job on the girl, who remembered it all and in vivid detail to this day, so very sad. Oh, I learned a lot, Miss Granger, including how this little girl grew up wanting nothing more than a chance to pay him back, to pay us back for what she suffered."

"I hate you."

Harry stands and stares down at the witch. Magic seems to roll off of him in waves.

"And I don't give a damn. I don't blame you for your anger. If it's any consolation, the man was a Death Eater whose mind I shattered when I was seventeen. I could have him prosecuted in our world for his crimes if you wish – I am an Auror after all – but before anyone from our world will lift a finger for any government of which you are a part, I would say this to you and your precious Prime Minister: think long about your actions as they regard our world. There are better ways than this. Many of us are even sympathetic to the faults you see in our society, but open war is not the answer."

He takes a peculiar, hourglass-shaped device from a golden chain about his neck. "And if you'll forgive me, according to a cryptic message that I'll be leaving myself soon, I have a war to go stop. Do think on my words and remember…" The air in the room turns frigid, matching his tone. "You _don't_ want me as your enemy. If you or your government _ever_ thinks to threaten my family again, the consequences will be dire."

And with that, Harry Potter twists a knob on the hourglass device and disappears in a mote of white light and a deadened 'crack'.


	10. Sirius Gives Harry 'The Talk'

_Author's notes_: _I don't own Harry Potter. _

_I wrote this short piece upon encountering one too many cutesy, waffy, "some adult figure gives Harry/Ron/Ginny/whoever The Talk" stories, where 'The' and 'Talk' appear in all capitals, as in The Queen and The Scrabble Crossword Game. Of course, annoyed as I was, I couldn't help but try my hand at the trope. _

_Warning__: this story is crude, is politically incorrect, employs profane language, and objectifies women. There are moments of frank discussion about aspects of human sexual activity. If this isn't your thing, I advise you to stop reading. _

_Many thanks to visitors of the Darklordpotter forum's Work By Author section for comments that improved this piece. _

* * *

**Sirius Gives Harry 'The Talk'**

By Perspicacity

Sirius makes his way to the bedroom door in his ancestral home. Harry, his godson, had arrived the night before, but aside from a meeting of the Order, they hadn't had much time to chat. The boy had had a bit of a spat with his friends, apparently, following the fiasco with the Dementors and had stormed off by himself, the doors in Sirius's ancestral home receiving a healthy banging in the process. There's nothing like a good bang.

"Harry?" he asks, rapping the door lightly with the back of his knuckle. "Mind if I come in?"

"Sure," Harry says glumly, his monotone split between indifference and teenaged depression.

The ex-convict enters and sees the boy sprawled on the bed, his clothing wrinkled; he's trying to surreptitiously stuff a photograph beneath one of the pillows.

"Let me see," he says, prying the photo from Harry's hands. Oh yes, prime blackmail material. The girl is Asian, with a delicate face and rather pale skin. Though not particularly gorgeous, she does have a pretty smile and features likely to be considered exotic for one like Harry who has spent his life closeted in the suburbs. "Jiang's kid? Didn't she marry that Chinese 'Claw, Chung or something?"

"Chang?" Harry asks.

"Yeah, that's it. Xiao Chang or something, always going on about how nobody could pronounce his name, but hell, what kind of a twat has a name that starts with an 'x'? So what's her name?"

"Cho."

"Nice," Sirius says. "Easy to pronounce and when she says it, her mouth 'o's, which is a hell of a visual on a teenage girl. Can't see much of her body in this, though I'll bet she's thin, like her mum."

Harry nods.

"Probably flexible too—ankles by her ears and all that. Jiang was something else, tightest arse in Hogwarts…" He gets a wistful look in his eye. "Speaking of tight arses, have you seen Molly's youngest lately? When she grows her tits, and if she can keep the pudge off, she'll be a hell of a bird."

Harry coughs, feeling decidedly uncomfortable at discussing his best friend's sister that way.

"Tell me you've at least noticed." Sirius's voice has taken on a scolding tone.

"Er, yeah. Hard to miss, really," Harry says, blushing. "Ginny's brilliant."

"More than brilliant, a minx and then some, though you'll have to watch if you start up with her. That mum of hers can cockblock like nobody. I'm surprised those twins ever got laid."

"Laid? Fred and George?" Harry asks in a near squeak, his astonishment suggesting that the prospect of actually being sexually active had never really sunk in.

"That's what I'm here to talk about, Harry. Has anyone ever given you The Talk?"

"The Talk? You mean about making little Harrys?"

"Fuck, who talks like that?"

"That's what Ron's father called it when he sat down with him one time at the Burrow. I got out of there fast once he started in 'plugs and sockets', putting the plug in gently, don't force it or you'll get a bent prong..."

"Plugs and sockets. Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, I'm surprised they ever reproduced. Look, Harry, I like Arthur. I like him a lot-in a manly, platonic sort of way. He's a good man, but he doesn't know jack about women. You need to realize that if the Hogwarts legends are to be believed, he and Molly were a couple since they were thirteen-year-old virgins christening the rug in front of the fireplace in the Common Room. I don't doubt his sincerity, but from the stories, I'd be surprised if Arthur knew a clitoris from a hand blender. He's only been with one woman, who was inexperienced and forgiving as all hell." He pauses a moment, working himself up for the next bit. "No, you need the real story about sex; that's what I'm here for."

"But I know about it already, mostly," Harry protests. At Sirius's disbelieving look, he says, "You, well, you take your sex and put it in her sex. And then you have sex."

Sirius gives Harry a not-so-gentle slap on the back of his head. "I don't want to _ever _hear you speak like that again, young man. If it got around that you were a terrible lay, I'd never live it down-and neither would you."

"I'm a little more worried about Voldemort than my reputation as a sex god," Harry says morosely.

Sirius slaps him again. "Fuck that sideways. And get over this pity thing you have going. Fine, Cedric bought it. Deal. Crying over it all summer is for emo little bitches, not manly men like us." He says to the ceiling, "What was Albus thinking, locking you in that place?"

"So what do I need to know?" Harry asks, fighting through his feelings to take advantage of the rare chance to learn something practical on this matter from someone who knows what he's about.

"A lot. First off, don't skip the foreplay. Learn all of the seventeen primary and twenty four secondary erogenous zones or you're no godson of mine. I'll get you a diagram-I think Reggie still has one in his room somewhere. Nothing will have her giving you that well earned hummer like playing her body like a pro."

"Right. Erogenous zones," Harry says, committing the sage words to memory.

"And you're going to have to find yourself a wingman, someone not named Ron. Guy has _serious_ jealousy issues and I wouldn't be surprised if he's inherited his cockblocking from his mum. No, get someone in your corner for real, someone willing to chat up the fat bird while you put the moves on her hot friend. Back then, we had Peter for that. Though he was a motherfucking betrayer and I'd love to shove his dinky little dongle in one of Arthur's power tools, he was the best damned wingman ever. No standards at all. Hell, he'd hit anything with a pulse-or without, if you count those times we hit the Vamp bar in Knockturn… Anyway, give it some thought."

"Right. Maybe Neville?"

Sirius shrugs. "Whatever works. So, what all have you done? Gone down on a girl? Felt her tits? Anal?"

"No," Harry says defensively.

"Tell me you've at least snogged someone."

Harry shakes his head.

"And you're how old again? Pecker anxiety?"

"I'm just waiting for the right girl, I guess," Harry says meekly.

Sirius motions to slap Harry again on the head, but the boy ducks beneath his hand at the last moment. "Harry, if you take anything away from this discussion, make it this: You _don't_ want your first time to be with someone you care about."

"Why not? Shouldn't it be with someone special?"

"Hell no! It's like when you learned to fly. You didn't go out and jump on a Firebolt the first time you got on a broom. You wouldn't have known what to do and you'd have just embarrassed yourself. No, you went for an older, broken-in model for your first ride, one that's forgiving and can help you out, that won't judge you by your mistakes. Same with your first time in the saddle. Find yourself some slag who's experienced and suitably emotionally detached. Let her teach you how to fly, how to handle her ride."

"I think you've about driven that metaphor into the ground."

Sirius's laugh sounds a little like a bark. "Point for you."

"I just hope I don't crash my first time."

"Oh, don't worry. I'm quite positive your first time will suck utterly and completely—for her, that is. For you it'll be the most glorious twenty seconds of your life."

"That's it?"

"If you're lucky. Half a minute if you manage to do it with a bit of Firewhiskey in you. But doing it drunk your first time isn't so great, since you'll want to remember it, every embarrassing, inglorious, fumbling, sticky moment. A little alcohol will help make things last a little longer, but too much and you won't have enough control to do your duty, which is to get her off afterward since it sure as hell won't happen in the act. Go with fingers, not your tongue, since you won't know what to do down there at first. Two is good. Three is too much. One's strictly for virgins. Let her show you how to do what you need to do."

"Right, two fingers and let her drive," Harry says, coughing.

"And watch out for kissing. Only with a closed mouth the morning after, until you both do a freshing spell-you don't want to taste last night's spunk, even if it's yours. Actually, kissing is complicated in general. I recommend you don't bother unless she's someone you care about."

"Why's that?"

"Too intimate. Gives the bird unrealistic expectations. Remember, Harry: _one night stands only_ until you have enough experience 'under your belt' to start up with someone you care about."

"But what's wrong with intimacy?"

"Nothing at all, once you're ready to settle down, which you aren't. Look, learn the classic lines and be able to improvise at a moment's notice: 'It's not you, honey, it's me. Now just isn't the right time. We had some great times, but it's just not what I'm looking for right now. Let's be friends.'"

"That sounds incredibly cynical."

Sirius shrugs. "Beats having a bird whose name you don't remember bawling her eyes out and banging on your door at three am. Or having to go with said bird to run a paternity test because you were _so sure_she did the contraceptive charms, which is something else you never leave to trust—especially once you start getting intimate. Sex isn't intimacy, Harry. Feelings are intimacy."

"Oh."

"Heavy stuff, eh?" the older man asks with a nasty grin.

Harry nods.

"Now I know I said before that your first time should be with a slag, but this is important: you have to be careful messing around with prostitutes. Disease isn't so much a problem in the magical world like it is for Muggles, but most of the ones you're likely to run into as a teenager have a pimp, so if you let your guard down, you run the risk of getting rolled. Never go with her when she says she has a place to do the deed because she's setting you up. Instead, take her to someplace you control. Have your wingman help. And remember, when it comes to whores, blowjobs beat sex—cheaper, less risk, and you can keep your wand out the whole time."

Harry nods.

"Let's see, what have I missed? Oh yeah, threesomes. They sound better than they are and no matter what, they leave you with twice the hassle in the morning. By all means, have one once, just so you can tick the box, but don't put much hope in its matching your fantasies. More likely than not, after they get you off in that first few minutes, you'll just end up in the way anyway."

Sirius affects a strange look. "And never do one with more than one bloke. It's weird."

There's a knock at the door, startling both of them.

"Harry? Are you in there?"

"Um, yeah, Mrs. Weasley," Harry says, feeling incredibly awkward.

"Is Sirius in there with you?" the woman asks through the door. "He said he was to speak with you about something important."

Sirius rolls his eyes. "Yeah, Molly, I'm in here. We're just finishing up, right Harry?"

"Er, yeah," he says.

"Well, it's nearly time for dinner and we have a meeting of the you know what afterward."

"We'll be right down." Sirius turns back to Harry. "Got all that? Remember, if you ever need advice, you know where I am."

"Yeah, I'm good. Thanks, Sirius."

Sirius tousles Harry's hair. "Anytime. Next year, I expect you to regale me with stories of debauchery and mayhem. Make me proud, son."

* * *

_To be continued?_


	11. Broom Closets and Socks

I don't own Harry Potter. I don't own Star Wars. I _wish_ I owned a light saber, but we don't always get what we want.

The following was for a DLP "Thank God You're Here" writing challenge. The prompt was simply that the story must use the line "You got me… socks." I decided to do a sequel to the last piece, _Sirius Gives Harry 'The Talk.'_ The surreal omake was co-written with my nine-year-old son, a Star Wars fan. (He wasn't permitted to read the first of the pieces, for obvious reasons).

* * *

**Broom Closets and Socks**

by Perspicacity

"Merlin, Harry, what happened?" Ron asks as he bursts into the Hogwarts infirmary. The shades are drawn and the room is candle-lit—Harry's head injuries apparently have left him a little light sensitive. With it being the holiday break, there's only one student here: Harry. On the table beside his bed are a variety of potions, mostly pain relieving draughts, but Ron notices a few vials of Skele-Gro as well, with its distinctive silver label.

"Booby-trapped present," Harry says tiredly. He's propped up on several pillows and his face looks contused and splotchy, like an electrocuted raccoon. "The tag said it was from McGonagall, so I thought it would be safe…"

"McGonagall gives you prezzies?" Ron asks.

Harry shrugs. "This was a first, or so I thought, so either she took a page from Dobby…"

There's a loud pop. "Harry Potter is wanting his Dobby?"

"No, but thanks for asking," Harry says, the words having the singsong tenor of routine.

"If Mister Harry Potter wants anything from Dobby, he just has to ask."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry says as the elf snaps his fingers and disappears.

"How'd he know you were talking about him?" Ron asks.

Harry shrugs. "I think he's stalking me invisibly."

Dobby pops into existence again. "Harry Potter knows his Dobby is watching? Harry Potter truly is a great wizard. Does the Great Harry Potter need anything?"

"No, but thanks for asking." Dobby snaps his fingers and disappears again.

"Barmy."

"Utterly. And constitutionally unable to use pronouns. Anyway, unless she decided to have Bludgers pummel me to within an inch of my life, I probably have your lovely brothers to thank for my situation."

Ron winces. "Yeah, about that. Not that I think that they're right or anything, because we both know they tend to take things way too far, but you did get caught in that broom closet with Ginny."

Harry looks at his friend askance, as if getting ready to bolt, injuries or not. "You're taking it well. What happened to, 'I'm going to kill him, raise him as an Inferius, and kill him again'?"

"Calming draughts. I took like nine or ten of 'em."

"Lovely. You know, you could have sent Ginny…"

"Not a chance. Harry, about Ginny—"

"Totally consensual," Harry says.

"But she was going down on you!" Ron says hotly.

"Consensual."

"Her blouse was open!"

"Consensual. Well, mostly. A little creepy, to be honest—she's not got much there to look at yet, but I wasn't about to complain. And what can I say, Ron? I guess she wanted her turn to swish and flick the Harry Potter flesh wand."

"But she's my _sister_, you git! She's fancied you forever—and you're just leading her on. You were caught with Tracy just last week! And the map showed you were with Katie too right before break!" Ron's face has turned from pink to puce.

"You guys nicked Dad's map?" Harry holds up his hands. "Look, all I said to her was that if she wanted to make a go at things, she'd have to realize that other witches were vying for spots on my broom cupboard card too and I left it to her to take it from there."

"You're a manwhore, Harry."

"As my Godfather says, there's no such thing as bad head. Speaking of—my Godfather, not the head—how is he?"

Ron takes a deep breath and lets the magic of the potions he's taken relax him. "Bored. Mum's driving him spare, but fine otherwise. We're at his place for the hols following Dad's attack. Thanks, by the way, for saving his life."

Harry shrugs. "Wasn't doing much else here, except suffer the tender mercies of Skele-Gro."

"Yeah. Well, happy Christmas all the same. Look, I know it's not much, but here's a present—and I checked that it's not booby trapped."

Harry opens the small, lumpy gift. It's a pair of hand-knit woolen socks.

"You got me… socks," Harry deadpans. "So very thoughtful. Thank you, Ron."

"They're from Mum. I don't know if you were looking forward to one, but she wasn't going to give you a Weasley jumper this year, mate, not after what happened with Ginny, though Ginny's wearing it now for some reason. Anyway, happy Christmas."

"All the same. I'll write her a note—when my hands aren't smashed into fleshy lumps, that is."

"Yeah. Be well, Harry."

"Thanks. And Ron?" Harry's expression hardens, taking on the determined, stony glint reminiscent of how he looked when he faced down the Basilisk his second year. "Don't apologize for your brothers. They'll get what's coming to them."

* * *

**[Omake]**

"How are you feeling, Harry?" The Headmaster asks.

"I'm doing better, Sir. How were Sirius and the others?"

The old man pats Harry's arm. "They're missing you, of course, and are understandably upset over what happened to Arthur, but fine otherwise."

Harry nods, a lump in his throat at the memory of being the snake that struck down Mister Weasley. "Um, sir? Would you care for a pair of socks? It's Christmas and all."

Dumbledore's expression brightens as he reaches for the fuzzy woolen socks knit in a color just gaudy enough to match his wardrobe. Just then, there's a loud popping sound and the socks are snatched away from his grasp.

"So close," he says sadly.

"Dobby is wanting socks and is not letting Mister Harry Potter give his Wheezy socks to Bad Dumbledore."

"Master Dobby," Dumbledore says in sonorous voice, one that is filled with anger.

"Count Dooku." Dobby says, his voice gravelly.

Dumbledore answers with a slightly raised eyebrow.

"Dooku? Who's that?" Harry asks aloud, but is ignored by the two powerful beings before him.

"You have interfered in our affairs for the last time," Dumbledore says, raising his hand. Wandless magic propels a hospital bed toward the diminutive elf, who raises his own tiny hand and directs it away, causing it to clatter against the wall.

Then a potions cart flies toward Dobby, as if hurled by an invisible giant. Dobby sets his feet in a horse stance and flings it away with a grunt.

Dumbledore raises his hands toward the ceiling, causing large blocks of stone to dislodge and fall down toward Dobby, who raises his own arms protectively, causing an invisible wall of force to keep the blocks from crushing him to paste. A flick of his tiny wrist sends them tumbling across the infirmary floor.

"Powerful, you have become, Dooku. The Dark Side I sense in you," Dobby says, his demeanor screaming anger, yet his voice surprisingly calm.

"I've become more powerful than any Jedi," Dumbledore says. "Even you!" And a heavy bolt of blue lightning flies from his fingertips toward Dobby. Dobby raises his hand and catches the lightning, grasping it like one would a gleaming snitch, holding the bolt of energy between them. They struggle for a long moment, the darkened infirmary lit up by tendrils of light, neither gaining an obvious advantage over the other.

"Much to learn, you still have!" Dobby says.

"It is obvious this contest will not be decided by our knowledge of the Force, but by our skills with the Lightsaber," Dumbledore replies.

"What!" Harry shouts. "Force? Lightsaber? What are you two talking about?"

Dumbledore flicks his wrist and a red bolt of solid light hisses into being, thrumming with a low sound. He flourishes this bolt of red like a rapier.

Dobby opens his hand and a metallic cylinder appears, as if by magic. He flicks a green light into being that matches Dumbledore's red beam. The two leap toward one another with strength and grace far beyond anything Harry had ever seen, crashing together in a titanic rain of blows, each contact making loud crackles in the air where the light beams cross. Dobby's beam flicks impossibly fast, green circles of light slashing and spinning toward Dumbledore. Dumbledore blocks each strike with his own red beam, which has a strange sort of power about it that Harry can only guess at.

Dobby leaps, flipping over the larger man, slashing downward several times with his light beam. Dumbledore grunts loudly as he deflects the powerful blows, spinning to counterattack, but Dobby quickly feints and levels another powerful slash at Dumbledore. This mighty battle between equals continues in this way for several seconds—all writhing and twisting and crashing of light. Then Dobby springs, touching the walls, and then the table, and then the bed, and then hurls his tiny body back into combat, his light stick and that of Dumbledore's crashing together one last time, holding against one another in a dynamic tension that threatens to explode in latent power.

"Done well you have, my Padawan," Dobby says.

"This is just the beginning," Dumbledore grunts, his mouth a rictus of fury. And then suddenly he thrusts his bony arm out and a massive wooden cabinet flies toward Harry's bed, threatening to crush him. And at that, the old man makes his escape.

Dobby closes his eyes and points blindly toward the falling cabinet, arresting its fall, protecting his charge. Harry, with wide eyes, sees it nearly crush him, then fall limply to the side with a loud crash.

Dobby opens his eyes and winks at Harry. "Dobby has the socks. Dobby rules!"

Then he snaps his fingers and disappears.

Harry, lying there, blinks and says to nobody in particular, "What the heck?"


	12. Ickle Ronnikins

**Ickle Ronnikins**

"Ickle Ronnie, have something to say? Cat got your tongue?"

Tears trickle from Ron's eyes down over his cheekbones and drip off the sides of his chin. He tries to spit out the candy that's been shoved into his mouth, but the fiery, honey-flavored wedge stays put. To his alarm, white vapor blows from the corners of his mouth and as the pain mounts, he becomes increasingly frantic. Even _he_ knows that Acid Pops are meant to be sucked slowly, that they have charms to prevent anyone from biting through to crack them open. Somehow, his brothers have worked out how to avoid the charm.

Undiluted acid dissolves his tongue slowly. He pinches his eyelids shut as hard as he can.

Sensing that his brother's hold has relaxed, he struggles to free his arms, but they wave impotently as George tightens the full Nelson again. Ron has the feeling that his arms will soon pop out of his shoulders.

He kicks at Fred, who easily avoids the blow. Ron's brother grins nastily. "Ah ah, little brother. It's for your own good."

"Telling tales to Mum again," George grumbles behind him. "Can't let us have a spot of fun, can you little brother?"

"Well, he can't tell them now, can you, Ronnie. And how _does_ that tongue feel?" Fred pats him on the cheek.

In actuality, Ron's mouth feels like it has a burning coal in it from the fireplace, a feeling he knows from experience. But he obviously can't say this, given that his tongue has been burned though.

He'd known from the start, of course, what the foil-wrapped candy was, and had fought with every ounce of strength in his five-year-old body, but his brothers were too strong for him. For a moment, as the pain began to register, he'd thought to swallow until Fred pinched his nose, blocking off his air, informing him matter-of-factly that he'd heard that the last person to swallow an acid pop died from a hole being eaten through his stomach.

Ron didn't really want to die.

So he's been made to hold the candy in his mouth, every involuntary whimper punctuated by a sharp poke to the tummy, as it slowly eats away his tongue.

Though his eyes leak tears, he doesn't cry audibly. He knows that if he does, and he gets his brothers into trouble again, whatever they do to him afterward in the dark, when his parents are sleeping and oblivious, will be far worse for him—or for Ginny. Yes, they know how he adores his sister, how he'll do most anything to avoid seeing her hurt, and would happily take their revenge on her to get at him, if that's what it takes.

He hates the tears, stubborn things that give them satisfaction in knowing the extent of his misery. His breaths come in wet, snotty sniffles.

"Ruddy tough," George says. Ron clomps him with a foot, seeing his chance.

"Now we're not going to be going to tell Mum any more tales, are we, Ronnikins. We can do worse than this, you know."

"Much worse."

Ron knows.

* * *

He awakens to hushed voices. There's a giggle and he freezes, knowing something is amiss. A strange weight presses on his chest and then he has a sudden feeling of a sharp something plunging into his flesh. He cries out, pulling his Teddy close, but to his horror, it wriggles. Looking down, he sees in the moonlight a massive spider standing over him with hairy legs, its horned mandibles sunk into his chest, its bulbous eyes. Liquid heat rushes through his body and he tries calling out again, despite the hand held over his mouth. He's finding it difficult to draw a breath.

He begins perspiring and shivering at the same time. His hands feel cold and numb.

A moment passes and he feels something hard shoved into his mouth, pushed way into the back of his throat. It is hard to breathe, so very hard…

Things go black for awhile.

Though the twins later deny it, claiming it was just a bad dream, Ron notices faint, white scars on his chest and that his pajamas have finger-sized holes in them. And they smell mediciny, like the Murtlap Essence that Mum rubs on his skinned knees.

Mum notices that evening that their emergency Bezoar is gone. The twins, of course, accuse Ron.

He'll never lose his fear of spiders—or of his brothers.

* * *

"What are you doing with Mum's wand?" Ron asks warily, as Fred and George sneak into his room, the door closing quietly behind them.

"The Cannons, Ron? Really?" Fred says with a snort.

"Rubbish, they are," George says, poking at Ron's new poster on the wall with the wand. The players huddle to one side of the poster. He tosses the wand to Fred, who catches it expertly.

Ron is rather proud of the poster, to be honest. It's an official team poster from last year's roster that Dad had bought for him in Quality Quidditch Supplies, something brand new, of his very own. In a family where he's forced to eat fast, lest his brothers take the food from his plate, having _anything_ he can call his own is a luxury.

Ron hopes to play for the Cannons someday.

"A truly wretched team," Fred says. "Bottom of the league for years."

"Hey, I like them!" Ron says and then mumbles, "And Dad says their merchandise is cheaper, so we can afford it."

"Well, there's no accounting for taste," Fred says, wrinkling his nose.

"Though expected from someone who tells tales, like Ickle Ronnikins here."

"Telling tales, still, even after we warned him of the consequences."

"Tales, tales, so many to be told. But whatever are we going to do about that?" Fred taps his chin with Mum's wand, causing pink bubbles to float about the room.

"Unbreakable Vow?"

"Wicked idea! Do you know how to do it?"

George shrugs. "Heard the words on Mum's program on the Wireless. Didn't seem too hard."

"I'm not taking any Vow," Ron says, standing in front of his brothers, defiant. As every magical child knows, Vows are serious magic with serious consequences. It isn't a simple prank.

"Ah, but we're not exactly giving you a choice, Ickle Ronnikins," Fred says, sending a stinging hex at him.

"Ouch!"

He sends another stinging hex, then another. Soon, Ron's body is covered in raised welts, bulbous lumps of flesh swelled by magic.

"That looks like fun. Mind if I try?" George asks.

"Not at all." Fred hands him the wand.

A faint purple hex strikes Ron in the face and his ears grow to enormous size. "Oops," George deadpans.

Fred shrugs. "I see no difference. Carry on, brother of mine."

"So, Ronnikins, about that Vow." Another stinging hex strikes him in the eye, making it swell closed.

Fred capitalizes on Ron's distraction and grabs his hand, clasping it in his own and George taps it with the tip of the wand.

As Fred speaks, Ron feels an expectant tension build. "Do you, Ronald Weasley, swear to never do or say anything to Mum or Dad that will get George or me in trouble?"

"Swear it, Ron, or I'll give Ginny a matching set of ears," George says, grumbling.

"Swear it, Ron, or we'll make them permanent."

"She'll cry. Do it."

"Say, 'I do,' Ron, or she'll hate you for it."

"Do it, or else…" There is real malice in George's words.

And then Ron feels something guide him to act. Perhaps it's the wild magic swirling about the room, giving his young mind a moment of clarity, a feeling that what he's about to do is right. Perhaps it was fate, guiding him this moment to do something that will change everything in his young life.

"I do," he whispers, giving into the magic.

A tongue of flame spits out of the wand, wrapping around the two boys' hands, binding them together for a moment. Ron feels the mantle of something heavy settle upon his shoulders, an almost physical sensation of obligation as the magic seeps into him. From Fred's reaction, he apparently had felt something too.

The door flings open and Dad is there, livid. He sees what they are doing and knocks the wand out of his son's hand.

Of course, the twins pin the blame on him, blame which he accepts stoically, the memory of the spell they had wrought still fresh in his mind.

* * *

"Oh Merlin!" George says quickly, holding a hand over a rapidly bleeding wound, as if willing it to close on its own.

"Ginny, damn, we're so sorry. Stay with us, Gin-Gin, stay awake…"

"Don't let go, Ginny. Don't go to sleep!" Ginny's eyes, Ron sees, are glassy and unfocused.

"Ron! Go get Mum!"

"But…" Ron says, his breath hitching.

There's so much blood.

He's avoided his brothers of late, suffering their hexes and jinxes in silence, accepting their pranks without comment. Mum had pulled him aside a couple of times, when it was obvious what had happened, but he'd kept his silence, the magic inside of him warning him of dire consequences should he break his Vow.

Dad thought that maybe he was growing up and said as much, but Ron just shook his head and went to his room. He'd known the truth, that the magic inside was telling him not to say anything about the brothers he has grown to hate so.

The same magic screams at him now not to betray the Vow he had taken.

But Ginny is hurt, lying in the grass, bleeding. Dying. He loves his sister so much and has always looked out for her.

Magic or not, Ron makes his decision. He runs to get Mum, his legs, long for his age, carrying him fast through the meadow. He leads her outside and watches, fascinated, as she knits the worst of her daughter's wounds. Mum picks her up and takes her to the Floo.

It's a sign of the seriousness of his sister's injuries that Mum doesn't ask how it happened, doesn't yell at all. That evening, after returning from Saint Mungoes, Mum tucks Ginny into bed and comes downstairs, where Percy, George, Fred and Ron are sitting at the table with Dad. Everyone's worried.

"Ginny's going to be okay," Mum says and Ron feels happier than he can ever remember.

Then she starts to yell at Fred and George. Her words sound faint to Ron's ears, as if being spoken through cotton. He feels weak all of a sudden, as if something vital were leaking from him. And then the world turns black about the edges, parchment in a fire, smoldering and catching aflame.

* * *

Ron knocks softly on his sister's door, a rolled-up poster in hand.

Ginny answers. Her face is splotchy and her eyes are red. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

"I came to say goodbye," he says quietly.

"Why?"

"I don't have any magic. Dumbledore says I can't go to Hogwarts and with Dad's job, the family can't afford to keep a Squib around. Besides, without magic, I'll never fit in. Squibs don't belong in our world. Mum and Dad are going to send me tomorrow to live with Mum's cousin, the accountant. I heard them talking. Anyway, I wanted you to have this." He hands her his Cannons poster. "I'd rather you kept it than let it go to those prats."

"I wish you didn't have to go," she says quietly.

"Me too."

"Don't go!" Ginny pleads, hugging him fiercely. She's been hugging him a lot since the incident. Ron thinks it might be the Life Debt that Dad says she owes him from his risking his life to save hers. He tried to say that he had no choice, but Dad had just ruffled his hair and told him how proud he was of Ron.

"I'll write you every day, I promise," she says, sniffling.

"I don't think Muggles are allowed owl post."

"I'll find a way."

Ron nods, but doesn't say anything for a long time, feeling thoroughly wretched at seeing his sister so sad. Then he thinks of something that might cheer her up. "You'll be starting up at Hogwarts soon. Who knows, maybe you'll even meet Harry Potter…"

"Harry Potter is just a _storybook_ hero, Ron. You're the real hero."

* * *

The ride to the park is long and bumpy in the back of Dad's car and a part of Ron wishes it would never end, though another, bigger part of him just wants to get away from his family and their pitying looks as fast as possible. Maybe with this Squib uncle he'll get a chance to eat his fill for once without wondering how his food has been pranked.

Dad turns into a lot next to the park and after going forward and backward a few times, looking out the window, he manages to stop the car more or less within the lines painted on the pavement. Nearby, a tall man in a dark Muggle suit stands beside a shiny silver car. Though Ron hasn't seen many automobiles in his life, he thinks it's possibly the most brilliant thing he's ever seen.

They get out and Mum rushes over to hug the man. "Jimmy, it's _so good_ to see you again."

"It is good to see you too, Molly. It's been what, twenty years since the family kicked me out of the house for being a Squib and thus a 'disgrace to the Pruett name?'" Mum looks very uncomfortable, as if she's eaten something that's off.

The man says in a Scottish burr, "And you must be Arthur."

"I'm honored to meet you, Mr. Pruett. Say, what kind of automobile is that?" he asks, walking over to inspect the vehicle more closely.

"An Aston Martin DB5," the man says crisply. "Do you know much about cars, Mr. Weasley?"

"Not a thing," he says, chuckling nervously. He seems to be uncomfortable as well around the imposing man, which makes Ron feel very self-conscious.

"Indeed, and this is your son, the one that I've heard about?" the man asks, smiling for the first time and offering his hand.

"Yes, sir," Ron says, feeling a little shy, but then he remembers what Dad had said, that accountants are important people in the Muggle world and Mr. Pruett should be treated with the utmost respect. He shakes the man's hand and looks him straight in the eye.

"Your parents tell me you risked your life and magic to save your sister. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

The man peers at Ron intently, searching for something, judging him ,perhaps, as he holds Ron's gaze for a very long time. The only other person who has ever made Ron feel quite so uncomfortable was Professor Dumbledore a few days prior, when he had come by to work out what had happened to Ron's magic.

Dad clears his throat, as if to say something, but Mum hushes him.

Mr. Pruett must have found what he was looking for in Ron because his smile widens. "Buck up, boy. We're going to have a great time together, you and I."

* * *

"Mind that you don't touch any of the buttons, wouldn't want to cause an accident," James says wryly. Apparently, Ron's guardian stopped going by 'Jimmy' once he started attending a Muggle school called Fettes College. James is a much more wicked name anyway. Ron wonders whether he should change his own name to something less plain.

"Yes, sir."

"And by the way, I don't go by Pruett in the Muggle world. The name's Bond, James Bond."

* * *

Author's note: After reading one too many rants picking on Ron and one too many stories making him out to be an insensate oaf, I felt he deserved a day in the sun.

Incidentally, burning a hole through Ron's tongue with an Acid Pop, Transfiguring his teddy bear into a giant spider, and attempting to force Ron into an Unbreakable Vow (with potentially fatal consequences) are all strictly canon: the Weasley twins were complete and utter bastards to their younger sib.


	13. Strange Aeons

**Strange Aeons**

_That is not dead which can eternal lie.  
And with strange aeons even death may die. _

- The Necronomicon

* * *

Harry watches numbly as his Godfather tumbles through the archway and into the depths beyond. All about the Room of Death, the melee continues, surrounding him in the sounds of screams, grunts, and bits of shattered stone clattering upon the floor. Spellfire spray, jets of light etching gouges into the stonework and benches. Harry ignores this, feeling weak in his legs. He stumbles onto the floor and long seconds pass as his forehead presses against the cold marble.

Then an ill humor seizes his body and he shudders as he rolls onto his back. There is a faint chanting in the background. As he listens, he feels a change inside his body, a slow shift of organs moving and morphing into something else, something otherworldly. The world seems to tilt sideways and loses essence, like faded ink on old parchment, even as his own substance seems to deepen somehow. His limbs feel heavy, more substantial. He feels himself become a solitary being, one of purity and transcendence in a world of ugly, ghostlike half-things squabbling like dogs over scraps.

He watches, implacable, as one such, dark-clad in a white mask, stands over him. The man sends a flash of green light downward, worming into Harry's chest. The flash of the curse, dim to Harry's eyes, fades after a moment and Harry feels a pinprick of pain over where his heart once was.

Things still for a moment, the world coming to a stop, spells frozen in mid-air. Harry feels overcome by a dreadful fatigue. He wills himself to rouse. Focusing on his heart, he commands it to beat and it does, a peculiar three-fold cadence. Thub-thrub-thrub, Thub-thrub-thrub. The thudding is loud and regular not in his ears, but in another sensory organ he cannot recall having, a rhythmic pulsation that he knows, somehow, resonates with the rhythms of the cosmos, the beating stirring alien magic beneath unfathomable depths, magic from before the age of man.

The voices continue their chant, low murmurs in a forgotten tongue from beyond the archway.

And then he's standing before it, a wisp of fabric over his hand sliding silkily, a lover's touch. He caresses ancient stones that are strangely familiar and they feel unnaturally cold, the chill of the deepest seas, of sympathetic magiks that touch worlds buried beneath time, cities older and greater than even the lost civilizations of Atlantis and Dwarka.

His fingertips crack and bleed from the cold, becoming black things. The chanting crescendos, branding his very soul and psyche with alien patterns. He traces the runes with his fingertips and they glimmer beneath his touch with eldritch light.

He is chanting with them now, his voice an octave lower than it should be, his tongue having divided into sections, the ends forked to enable syllables man cannot form. Matching runes appear upon the backs of his hands and his forearms. Beyond the Veil, he sees a set of stairs descending into the depths, into the beyond, where his destiny lies.

He races through, down into the domain of Dream, and as he goes, he begins to feel the faint touch of another on his mind, a hint of a rousing presence so vast as to be incomprehensible.

He runs for an interminable time and the landing is within his sight, a chamber ahead that glows and flickers cerise in brazier light. There's a tug on his shoulder and he's rocked to and fro.

No! So close...

He sprints downward, two at a time, three, willing himself faster even as the images in his mind quiver and fade, the alien touch receding, leaving behind pangs of loss and an acute spiritual hunger.

He's lonelier than ever before, the pain, raw and ruinous. His eyes are wet.

"Oi, Harry, Mum says it's time to wake up."

It takes him a long time to process these words, his mind recoiling, reforming to accept human language once again.

"Unh?" he says ineloquently. The words he had tried to say stumble over tongue and teeth in a now-human mouth.

"Bill stopped by with Fleur, so Mum's going spare again. Oh, and the twins stopped by as well, so maybe we can get a Quidditch game?"

Human. He's with humans again. Ron. That's other other's name. Ron... Weasley, he thinks.

The world becomes unbearably bright as this Ron opens the window shade. They're at the Burrow, Harry remembers, a sort of happy place, or at least it was once, before the recurring dreams that have haunted his nights. He hears Ron thunder down the stairs and things quiet again, save for the clatter of a household stirring in the morning and faint memories, now the fading echo of a memory of a dream.

The abrupt disconnect has left him feeling desolate and he begrudges his surrogate family their well intentioned prodding. He'd never thought to find himself longing for Dursley solitude over the chaotic tumble of life with the Weasleys, when he could meditate without interruption. Meditation draws him back to the Veil, to Sirius's death and a persistent pain he'd prefer to face alone.

He unwraps from the tangle of blankets and sits upon the narrow bed. They've put him up in Percy's old room, though it's somewhat less immaculate than when the estranged Weasley had lived there. Harry's ragged t-shirt sticks to his skin in a sweaty ring about his neck. He sniffs at a damp armpit, finding it a bit rank, though mostly tolerable.

He dresses mechanically, his fingers stiff from the memory of the frigid stones. With a defeated sigh, he makes his way downstairs. The loo is occupied, so he continues on to the kitchen, to Weasley chaos, to human closeness as alien to him as his dreams.

He doesn't notice until later the faint runes upon the backs of his hands.

* * *

The school bell signals the start of the game: the game of hunt. Though scrawny, Harry is fast, more so than most of Dudley's gang, though they make up for this with numbers, persistence, and a generous measure of the sort of viciousness that young boys get up to when adults are not about.

He slows a bit, timing his crossing of Magnolia Road in order for the auto he sprints in front of to just miss him. The blaring horn and angry shouts delay his pursuers for a few seconds, allowing him a head start across the playground. He chances a look back. To get home, he needs to arc across, taking the rightmost path onto Magnolia Crescent, but it seems that Piers Polkiss has anticipated his move, cutting away from the main group. Even though Harry is faster, the mousy boy will reach the kissing gate near Magnolia Crescent well before he can get there.

While the smaller, ten-year-old boy doesn't punch nearly as hard as Dudley—few children their age do, after all—he carries a pocketknife, which gives Harry pause. Aunt Petunia would be cross if Harry were to bleed upon their tiles again.

Instead, he darts left, with Dudley, Frank Doebling, Pip Michaels, and a tall, tousle-haired boy named Mark in tow. He races through the left gate and out onto Marigold Street, a place he usually avoids, as it's lined with shops and the adults there always give him sharp looks. Worse, their embellished stories of his "hooligan" ways always seem to find their way back to Aunt Petunia and, worse, Uncle Vernon.

A shop door opens in front of him and Harry stumbles to a stop, trying to avoid hurtling through the glass. Frank Doebling, the fastest of Dudley's lot, catches hold of his baggy shirt and pushes him down. A knee crushes onto the small of Harry's back and he feels his face pushed down into the sidewalk. Someone kicks him and his right arm is twisted behind. His shoulder feels near to snapping.

Suddenly, the pressure on his back is gone and the blows have stopped.

Harry stands, a bit shakily, and notices that a man is standing beside Dudley and his friends, who appear dazed. This man, whom he has never seen before, is middle-aged and whiskered, dressed smartly in a grey linen suit and shoes so carefully polished as to appear wet, as if he had been walking through a marsh. Upon the back of his hands are markings like tattoos, yet silvery. As Harry watches, they seem to writhe, as if alive. The man looks at Harry and winks as if the two were sharing a private joke.

Harry stammers a thank-you and the man nods to him silently.

Then Harry catches the man's reflection in the shop's window. Instead of a person, the image is of something else entirely-a frog-like thing, with a gaping maw, rows of short, serrated teeth, and tentacles dangling from his chin. The reflection's bulbus, lacrimating eyes turn toward Harry and it blinks, two sets of eyelids closing over each milky orb, the inner lid blinking sideways, the outer lid, up-and-down. The being's skin is dark and mottled, with open pores that ooze a sort of viscous liquid.

Tentacles from the creature's chin writhe like a mass of serpents and have attached sucker-like upon the boys' heads and faces. Somehow, Harry senses that the being is feasting upon them in some fashion, as if eating their thoughts and psyches. Good riddance to bad rubbish, he thinks, though he wonders whether the thing would get much of a meal from his dullard cousin.

He watches for a long moment as they stand in silence, the frog-man relishing his feast. A few adults pass, giving them strange looks, but Harry ignores them. Then, the creature stops eating and Dudley and his gang walk away dazedly, their eyes wide and unblinking. The frog-man bows deeply to Harry, as if paying homage. Harry nods in return.

It would not be the last time he encountered such beings.

* * *

Harry ducks into a small study off the main corridor to avoid being assigned yet another task in Mrs. Weasley's ignoble quest to rid Grimmauld Place of mold, dust, and dark magic. After having spent weeks with the Dursleys doing much the same, apart from the dark magic, Harry considers it a rather dismal way to spend a holiday.

Even with the gaslights sputtering, the small room is dark and foreboding, with cobwebs crisscrossing the crown moldings and tall stacks of boxes. He peeks into one of the boxes and finds that it's filled with old books with tattered bindings and pages crinkled by moisture. He runs his finger over the spines, not recognizing any of the titles, though feels drawn to one in particular. The leather has a strange quality about it and he resolves to return later to learn more.

Before he can think more on it, he hears a croaking voice.

"Nasty brat, standing there as bold as brass. Harry Potter, the boy who stopped the Dark Lord. Friend of mudbloods and blood-traitors alike. Kreacher wishes death upon him."

Harry turns around to see Sirius's House Elf behind him. Kreacher is a wrinkled, gnarled thing and he peers askance at the decrepit Elf, who continues with his muttered insults. Annoyed, Harry removes his glasses and glares at the Elf, looking for something he can't quite describe, something beyond normal perception. He's never told his friends of this, but for reasons he doesn't completely understand, he's begun to be able to sense the edges of magic, a folding under, as it were, tucked into a dimension that only he seems able to see. He exerts a sort of pressure, as if tugging at the edges of the magic, sensing, somehow, the promise of something within the creature that he can unravel.

Suddenly, with a burst of brilliance, the wrinkled thing is wreathed in a shimmering aura—electrical, ethereal—it's a something that Harry feels he must possess. He finds himself drawing the magic within himself, drinking it in in heavy, glourious draughts, gouts of clement power that leave him feeling elated and soaring, as if riding his Firebolt at top clip. He closes his eyes in bliss.

"Stop it! What are you doing to him?"

Harry looks down and sees that the House Elf at his feet is pale and gasping for breath. Hermione is in the doorway, arms akimbo. She's furious with him.

"Kreacher will be good, young master. Kreacher will be good." The Elf's words are raspy and weak.

"Leave us, Kreacher," Harry says quietly. With a whimper, the Elf disappears with a crack.

"What were you doing, Harry? How were you torturing him so?" Hermione asks, narrowing her eyes, and continues her unwelcome barrage of questions. "And why did he obey you? Why did he call you 'master'?"

Harry shrugs and looks up at the ceiling, avoiding her eyes, not wishing to tell her how Sirius had named him his heir. After having put up with her annoying crusade for House Elf rights the year prior, he has no intention of letting her know that as the heir of the entailed estate, he technically owns or will own the House Elf, something the Elf's magic no doubt recognizes.

"Dunno. Sirius's House Elf just started acting barmy all of a sudden."

She gives him a suspicious look. "Well, Mrs. Weasley says to come down for lunch. We have to clean the second floor parlor now that the Doxies have been removed."

That evening, Harry returns to the strange room with the cobwebs and boxes. He calls Kreacher to him and notices the House Elf holding a golden locket decorated with serpents and an 'S'-shape upon the lid. Harry recognizes it as the locked that none of them could work out how to open before. After some groveling on Kreacher's part and some stern orders on Harry's, Kreacher begs him to take it, sharing a strange story about how it had once belonged to the Dark Lord and how it was it was his former master's dying wish to see it destroyed.

On a whim, Harry tries a Parseltongue command and it opens slowly. Inside is an unnatural space deep beyond the normal limits of magic. Familiar, crimson eyes blink open and peer back at him.

Harry smiles wickedly, sending magical feelers into the container, chasing the thing within, herding it to a corner of the void. It recoils, trying to hide, but Harry gives no quarter, instead binding the spirit and fraying its being from about the edges, much as he had done earlier with the House Elf.

Again, he's treated to a brilliant aura, this time of deepest violet. He begins to devour the magic, drawing it within himself, finding it rich, luxuriant, decadent. Tortured screams become progressively muffled as the locket's aura fades and, all too soon, disappears.

Kreacher's elation at the locket's destruction turns to horror as Harry consumes the diminutive being's soul and magic for afters.

His head swimming with euphoria, Harry opens the tome that had drawn him to the room, the one with which he felt an odd sort of psychic resonance. It's a handwritten volume titled Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Unspeakable Cults. One of the sketches within resembles the frog-like being that he had seen continually throughout his life. Beneath the drawing is a hastily scribbled incantation that Harry daren't read aloud.

Even without reading the explanation on the page, he can sense that it is an incantation of ineffable power, lost to the world aeons ago—a power that he alone possesses.

He would tell no one of this discovery.

* * *

With a sharp tug, the broken tooth slides from Harry's arm, leaving the flesh burning terribly as poison spreads throughout his body. Above, Fawkes hovers, but refuses to come near for some reason. Harry stares at the creature, willing with his eyes for the Phoenix to heal him with his tears, to do something to save his flagging life, but to no avail. Dumbledore's familiar squawks in fright and vanishes in a burst of flame.

Seconds pass that seem like an eternity. His body feels as if tendrils of flame have burrowed throughout like fiery worms, burning him up from the inside. His mouth tastes of copper.

Harry's heartbeat fades and then ceases.

There's a roaring in his ears as he feels a sudden connection to a vast, cosmic chorus, an expanse of Dream and dimension far outside human cognisance.

And then something stirs deep beneath the world. Harry mouths with his final breath a solitary word that he does not comprehend. "_R'lyeh_."

There's an echo through the cosmos and he feels a touch upon his mind, something filling him with strength, changing him within. His heart beats once again, a curious, three-fold cadence. Trub-thrub-thrub.

The world begins to look dim to his eyes and he gazes placidly upon the corpse of the Basilisk. Where before he had felt terror at the creature, he now feels contempt. It is a lesser thing, young and weak, a mere pretender at power.

He knows power.

Riddle's shade is there, taunting, but Harry cares not for the chattering of an insect. He crawls toward the diary, which glows brilliantly in his altered sight. Praeternatural instincts, like a babe nuzzling a bosom, impel and he begins to eat.

* * *

Harry limps into the fen, wading knee-deep into sticky muck, the cold mud squirming beneath his bare feet. Insects flutter about, a few landing upon his body to press proboscises into pale skin that glows faintly in the morning twilight, a few others landing atop the water. His flesh is marred by weeping wounds that ooze dark liquid, the marks of captivity spent in the tender care of masked lackeys with a fetish for physical abuse.

Harry is amused to feel human emotion once again, as if unearthed, ossified remains of an ancient being, to realize within his chest an intense, cold fury, an ache for reprisal. Betrayal leaves a wicked hunger, one that can only be sated by vengeance.

A grey-suited man approaches. He wades without hesitation into the brackish water, swishing it into small waves that welter the insects and cause them to take flight in a buzzing cloud. Oddly enough, the water doesn't seem to soak into the middle-aged man's creased, linen pants.

He is whiskered, resembling the man Harry had met long before, and his eyes carry the same vacant, inhuman sense about them. Behind, several similarly attired men and women approach in a wide semicircle just at the edge of the hazy depths. He bows, spreading his arms wide, and his companions mirror his movements. They remain so until Harry nods.

he speaks, finally, a rapid tumult of syllables that don't quite match the movements of his lips and jaws, the dialogue of a badly dubbed film.

"_Thglw nafh wanght. Rhe'mel wgangil'mogl fhantha aelgui_."

Harry smiles at that, a genuine smile, one filled with the promise of violence. He knows somehow, by buried instinct, what they offer—an army of thralls, cross-bred beings, and, above all, loyalty to him alone: the means by which to counter the Upstart who had dared imprison him, the means to remake the world in his vision. He rolls his hand into a fist. His vengeance would be glorious.

* * *

"Stand aside, woman."

"Not Harry! Please, no, not Harry—I'll do anything!"

A green flash of light flickers and a woman's body crumples to the floor of the nursery. The tot wails in fear, and a psychic echo issues forward, through space and time, chasing the currents of fate and stirring an ancient malevolence for but a moment, the first such in an aeon. It reaches back across Time and Dream, touching the tiny mind.

Little Harry's eyes darken, becoming black things that somehow project a sense of unthinkable age, becoming the vessels of a slumbering evil buried within the unfathomable depths of R'lyeh.

"_Avadra Kedavra_," his assailant says with relish, assured of its dominance in a game it is far too naïve and powerless to play properly.

The tot narrows its eyes contemptuously, ignoring the pathetic nattering of this tiny thing. He smiles mockingly for a moment, absorbing the frail curse, and opens his mouth to unleash an unworldly scream, tapping, for the briefest of moments, a power vaster than comprehension.

The Dark Lord's soul shatters with ineffable psychic force. It would be nearly a decade before his shade could begin to reform.

* * *

The wind squalls shrilly upon the sundered isle, whipping up clouds of ash, and a black-robed man walks slowly up the narrow, jagged path to a circular structure of cut stones, the last remaining stronghold of the free Magical people. From the distance, firelight flickers within, causing faint, dark shadows to dance upon the ground. Above, huddled figures move about the machicolations, bent against the icy wind.

The man slides undetected through the shadows, feeling a moment of magical pause as the guards about the outer perimeter have been added to his ranks.

Undesirable Number One, that's what they call him, erstwhile friends and foes alike. It's a fitting name, prescient almost.

They also call him the Living Dementor, though it's utter folly—he's far more malefic and terrible.

Harry's friends have all but vanished, fleeing what he has become, culled by troupes of Snatchers, slain by betrayal. The last had accomplished what even the fall of the Ministry could not—ceding the bastion of their world to Voldemort's banner.

Hogwarts is a smouldering ruin, thanks to a quisling's second betrayal. Would that he could have warned them against trusting a Malfoy's penitence. Would that such a warning be unnecessary. "Bad faith" is an appropriate name.

Dear Draco paid for his sins with his soul—Harry saw to that, at least, even if he could do nothing for Ron or Hermione, whom he'd found afterward, bodies entwined with one another in a final, deadly embrace, blackened limbs consumed by waves of Fiendfyre.

Dementors and Werewolves roam freely now in a world of predator and exiguous prey. Death Eaters take what they will and burn what they won't as England dies, suffocating on its own wretchedness. The Muggles have retreated, barricading behind concrete bunkers and machine gun nests, waiting for the end, praying to dead gods for deliverance, knowing that their days are few in number. In this, he respects their wisdom, as it surpasses that of their Wizarding kith, who still pretend that the war has not already been lost.

Oh, how they'd cried for a savior, had pleaded for delivery from their puny Dark Lord, had bargained, promised, cajoled… And had shackled him over his methods, offering him to their enemy in a misguided attempt to appease.

Fools, the lot of them. Let them reap their returns. Let them be bound and serve as they were meant to.

He knows his destiny, knows it to the core of his being, to the vaunted halls of R'lyeh: To rule over all; and rule he shall… but first, a visit to an old acquaintance.

The dark-clad man knocks upon the door, the sound dry and ponderous as a funeral drum. A frail, red-haired man answers. Harry knows this creature and is amused to see that the years have stripped him of his officious aplomb, leaving behind a sort of squalid humility.

The man's eyes widen in recognition.

"Hello, Percy," Harry says in a voice like a Dementor's rattle, summoning the man's wand and those of his Auror guard to his palm with a gesture. A second, subtle movement of his hand forces man and entourage to their knees.

Percy stammers something by way of a meaningless apology. Harry ignores him.

"Or, should I say, Minister-in-Exile Weasley, spineless betrayer?"

* * *

Harry stands at the shores of Scotland looking out over cold, tempestuous seas that roil with magical fury. The pillars and towers of Azkaban lie in the distance, a tiny dot brilliant in his Sight: Voldemort's stronghold, the last bastion of resistance to his rule.

He strips himself slowly of clothing and human affectations. Robes, boots, wands, and weapons fall to a pile. He has no further need of them. He strides forward to the edge of the cliffs, standing nude upon them, and spreads his arms, opening mind and magic to the powers beyond.

His loyal servants, the Deep Ones, are with him, forming long lines of Glamoured grey-clad beings standing stoically upon the cliffs, weathering the harsh wind. They are there to bear witness to his rebirth, as one of the cosmic forces of the Universe assumes his rightful place.

Harry feels a thrum of anticipation at the potential there but to be grasped. An ancient chant, one that has long haunted his dreams, comes to the fore.

"_Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn_."

"Dream no more, my friend," he says quietly.

The chant echoes among the Deep Ones, their voices joining his as the sound builds and the power accretes. A swirl of black clouds forms overhead, dominating the sky, a vast eye of darkness. Flashes of lightning illuminate the sky and the shrill wind is accented with rumbling. Somewhere, a portal opens and the world begins to shift on axis, becoming dim and faint. His black-hued eyes take on a sense of impossible age as they look out over the seas.

The entity once known as Harry Potter plunges downward into the sea.

Beneath the frigid waters, he opens his mind fully to the Other, joining in communion, shedding forever his human form.

He slips into his Animagus transformation, his true self, and feels his body begin to grow vast. He displaces a tremendous mass of water as he changes, launching a towering swell against the tiny prison island. Tentacles sprout from his chin and his hands and feet become webbed things. Massive, leathery wings grow from his back, rising out of the water as two vast, triangular wedges of inky blackness. He unfolds them slowly and they blot out the sky.

Then he rises from the depths, a thousand, thousand times larger than before, a being of impossible size that dwarfs the tiny island. He roars triumphant and a bass blast rends the air, sending tremors deep into the Earth, sounds not having been heard for aeons upon aeons. Eyes filled with malice gaze down upon the island and uncountable psychic tendrils twist and converge upon the stone structure, burrowing through walls, cells, tunnels. A timid few try to Apparate away, but he intercepts their feeble attempts, consuming each ephemeral magical flicker with almost negligent disregard.

He ignores the impotent spellfire as he searches inexorably through fortress and prison for souls within fleshy containers. Burning brilliant in his gaze, no Death Eater can hope to hide.

He seeks one shattered soul in particular. And finds it quailing before a power it cannot comprehend.

The great Cthulhu begins to eat.

* * *

_Author's note: I own neither Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling) nor the Cthulhu mythos (H. P. Lovecraft's invention, in the public domain). _

_This silly story eeked out a hard-fought last-place finish in the 2013 Dark Lord Potter Dystopia/Apocalypse contest. I wrote it on a lark, largely as a way of pulling rank on all those silly "Harry has a powerful, magical, Animagus form" stories. Harry's form is Cthulhu. I win._


	14. Hermione Interlude

_A brief Hermione interlude was written for the Teachers' Lounge "Iron Fic" Challenge competition, a timed event, 1500 words with the prompt: "Is this real, or has it all been inside my head?" While the judging was surprisingly close, Respitechristopher's deserving story won the competition and this story placed second. (I confess I sort of ran out of time; the writing becomes a bit sparse at the end and is neither as polished as I'd prefer nor is the tone quite what I was after.) _

_While it's not my best writing, I figured I'd post it here in the off chance that someone might enjoy it.  
_

* * *

"Mudblood filth, you _will_ tell me where the sword is."

Bellatrix Lestrange twists the dagger, pressing the point into the flesh of Hermione's neck, its tip breaking the skin slightly. Hermione feels a brief chill from the cold metal, then an intense burning as poison seeps into her.

"Never!" she says, feigning more courage than she feels.

"So be it. _Crucio_,"

The pain is unlike anything Hermione has ever felt, a sensation of being flayed alive, skin torn by a thousand jagged tears, acid dribbled into her wounds. She arches her back and screams, thrashing violently. Rivers of pain wash over her and blood runs down the side of her face from a tongue bitten through cleanly.

The Death Eater twists her wand and the pain redoubles. She screams again, louder this time, and begins to choke on blood. Waves of agony break across her consciousness, crashing against her crumbling sanity. Her hold on clarity slackens and long moments pass, reducing the proud Gryffindor to a base thing, mere flesh.

She's unable to draw breath. Only a plaintive whimper escapes her lips.

"_Crucio_."

The curse lashes against her once again and something breaks inside. Her mind fractures, turning in upon itself as it becomes too much to bear.

* * *

She rouses slowly to bright lights, her mind dull, insensate. Consciousness unfolds slowly, sensations coming piecemeal. It's warm. Her skin is itchy. She feels bruises at her wrists and ankles. The muscles in her lower back are terribly sore. She's wearing a coarse garment open at the back. The ceiling is high and the lights above are fluorescent. She's in the Muggle world. It's daytime. The place smells of antiseptic. There's an IV tube taped to the crook of her left elbow.

"Where am I?" she rasps.

She's lying upon a bed in a four-point restraint, hands and feet held fast by cloth straps. She hears a rustle by her head as someone stands up beside her.

"Jane?" It's a woman's voice, vaguely familiar. Hermoine's eyes are blurry and it takes a few blinks to clear them. When she does, she doesn't quite understand what she sees.

"Lavender?" What is her classmate doing here?

"I'm Janet, Love. We've been through this before?" The woman pats her on the cheek, showing the sort of detached affection that nurses everywhere seem to have. She's older than Lavender by a few years, an older sister perhaps, and her voice is weary, almost bored. She's holding a fashion magazine beneath a clipboard.

Hermione feels a sense of unease as the nurse measures her temperature and blood pressure. Though it seems far away, somehow, she wonders where Harry and Ron are. Are they still trapped at the Malfoy mansion? What of their quest? How did she find herself here?

She clears her throat in an attempt to get the woman's attention. "Please, can you tell me what am I doing here?"

"You don't remember?" The nurse's voice is laced with pity.

"No."

Lavender's clone just hums to herself as she walks to the doorway and presses a button on an intercom.

"Janet here in 311. The patient is awake and coherent, _finally_."

"We'll send the doctor over."

"Can you have her hurry? I need to use the loo."

"I do too," Hermione says. "Can you unfasten me please?"

"That's for the doctor to decide."

"Where am I?"

The woman sighs. "Saint Mungo's Hospital, mental ward. The answer hasn't changed since the last times you've asked."

"But this is the Muggle world."

The nurse ignores her.

There's a knock at the door and then it opens as a short, heavyset woman enters. She has a round face with a wide mouth set in a perpetual scowl. Her hair is grey and trimmed short, ending in loose curls. She has small, dark, sharp eyes.

Hermione gasps. "Madam Umbridge."

The woman looks at Hermione and clicks her tongue in disapproval, looking almost as if expecting something of the sort.

"It looks like we've suffered a bit of a relapse, haven't we dearie?" she says, sitting on the bed beside Hermione and smiling. It's a clinical, predatory smile, cold in its delivery. She turns to the nurse and says, "Put the patient back on thiothixene and ready another IV with haloperidol."

"Doctor?" the nurse says, surprised.

"The patient is clearly still delusional, suffering from acute psychosis. We'll leave her restrained until we know otherwise."

"Right."

"And send an orderly, please. She'll need to be cleaned up. Jake might do." Hermione wonders how invasive this 'cleaning up' will be, especially if done by a man.

As soon as they are alone, the woman turns her sharp eyes onto Hermione, offering her a hand. "Doctor Margaret Huxley. Pleased to make your acquaintance yet again. Oh, I'm sorry. It appears you're rather tied up, aren't you."

"Why am I here and why am I this way?"

"I know you hate to be restrained like this, but we simply had no choice, dear. I'm afraid you were hurting yourself and we can't have that."

"I don't understand."

She pats Hermione's head condescendingly. "Of course you don't. You were too busy shouting about 'dark wizards' or some such and fell into a screaming fit."

Hermione feels confused, her thinking slow and imprecise, not at all like the laser-like focus she's used to.

"Are you feeling up to answering a few questions?"

Hermione looks back at the woman suspiciously. The doctor takes a pen from the breast pocket of her coat.

"Can you please tell me your name?"

"Why?"

"Well, because I'm the doctor and you're the patient." The woman's high-pitched voice is unnaturally pleasant and Hermione has the feeling she's being spoken to like she's a tot.

"I don't trust you," Hermione says. She'd fold her arms if she weren't tied down.

"I don't expect you to, dear, but I do expect you to answer me without too much fuss. It would be such a pity to have to leave you like this until tomorrow."

"Fine. Hermione Jean Granger."

The woman writes something down, not looking at Hermione.

"And your parents?"

Hermione pauses for a moment, waiting until the doctor looks up at her, annoyed. "Steven and Emily Granger. Dentists."

"Where do you live?"

Another pause. "Coventry."

"Hmm," the doctor says, writing.

"And how old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"Where did you go to school?"

Hermione turns aside.

"I asked you where you went to school."

"I'm sorry," she says, turning away.

"Would it be fair to say the answer is still 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?'" the woman asks sweetly. "I thought so."

Hermione purses her lips and continues to look away. The woman continues to write on her clipboard.

There's another knock at the door and an orderly enters. He has dark hair and is dressed in a blue uniform with a plastic ID badge clipped to the pocket of his shirt. It reads, 'Jake Dixon,' and has a laminated photo of a bespectacled man.

He looks at Hermione and she recognizes him.

"Harry?"

* * *

"I need to get out of here," she says, repeating the mantra that has driven her for weeks now. Her slender arms wrap about her body and she rocks back and forth on her bed, the springs creaking rhythmically.

She's dreadfully bored, as the place has been intentionally made devoid of stimulus, another of the litany of cruelties she's made to suffer at the hands of the "good" Doctor Huxley. Hermione wonders at the woman's motivations, whether there's an underlying purpose or whether she's just evil.

The Bitch, of course, had taken her books and newspapers, even her notebooks and crayons, as they've continued their battle of wills, leaving her nothing to do, no means of occupying the long tedium between medications.

It's even more maddening to know that the woman is winning, that Hermione has been adapting slowly to the restrictions, learning to live within their confines, learning to play the reward-punishment game.

It's dark outside, past midnight, and only a square of silvery light shines in from the parking lot outside. The wall opposite the window is illuminated in a cross-hatch of squares and will remain until six twenty am, when the mercury lamps turn off. Hermione finds herself staring at the squares of light, listening to the quiet ticking of the clock and the unsettled frenzy of a mental hospital at night, slumbering madness punctuated by the occasional screams.

Her own had joined them that evening. Another late-night visit, as she was held down and violated.

She feels like vomiting.

It was the Bitch's doing. It had to be. Nothing happens in this place without her say.

She finds herself wishing desperately for release—even a return to the Malfoy's dungeons would be preferable to this aimless existence. Before, she at least had purpose, not a slow strangulation, every day losing a bit more of Hermione Granger to the humdrum plainness of Jane Wilkins, dutiful, if not so bright daughter of Wendell and Monica.

Most painful, perhaps, is that the orderly wearing the face of her best friend has made a point of avoiding her.

"Dammit, Harry. Why won't you help me?"

* * *

"Are you going to eat that?" The voice is airy and belongs to a blonde girl her age with stringy hair and large, pale eyes. The girl is new and looks emaciated, as if she's been living on the streets. Her skin is pallid and she has tracks of needle marks running up the insides of both of her arms.

There's sadness about her, but also a sense of kinship.

Luna.

By now Hermione has learned to stop saying the names of those from her former world. It only brings pain. And then more punishment.

"Go ahead," she chokes out, offering the wheat roll to the girl. Truth be told, she's long ago lost her appetite.

"I remind you of someone, don't I?"

Hermione nods, finding herself unable to take her eyes off the other girl.

"What was her name?"

"Luna," she whispers.

"I can be Luna for you," the girl says, smiling brightly. She stands and kisses Hermione on the forehead. "It'll almost be like having a friend."

* * *

"We love you, dear. We always have." Mum or _Monica_ hugs Hermione again, showing a clinginess that Hermione doesn't recall from her life before. Every hug hurts Hermione a bit more inside, stirring guilt at remembering what she had done to her real parents those months ago.

"I know, Mum," she says, hating herself for using the appellation.

"Don't worry about the rustication," _Wendell_ says. "The Dean says you can return next term—if you're well, that is. They say it also happened to John Milton and Oscar Wilde, so you're in good company, right honey?"

"Wendell!" Hermione's mum says, scolding her husband. "We agreed that we wouldn't talk about—"

"Look, Janey did her best and she's a good girl. She knows we're proud of her, no matter what happens. She'll always be our little girl, and we love her."

The Bitch is present—she always is when her parents visit—and she nods in satisfaction at this display. Hermione knows the man's putting on an act, though, pretending to be the doting, supportive father that society expects of him. But she also knows she'll never truly please him.

Some things are the same, no matter what world one finds oneself.

* * *

Snow collects softly upon the sill outside her window and the world beyond is cold and colorless, a contrast in greys, much like the world inside. It's been a year and she barely remembers who she was, narcotic cocktails having washed away a life of magic and wonder. And friendship.

"Gryffindor courage," she whispers to herself, steeling for a final attempt at freedom.

She must leave this place, no matter what the cost.

* * *

"Ma'am, please, I can't be alone with patients like this. They'll sack me for sure."

"Just stay for just a bit, please?"

"I'm really sorry, but I can't." The orderly pushes her away.

She clings to him. "Don't go, please! I see how you look at me, Harry. You want me, don't you, like the others have had me."

"I'm Jake, and I can't stay, ma'am, no matter how much I might like to." As he says this, he looks around, as if to see if anyone is watching. She knows then that she has him.

Some minutes later, he finishes in her mouth. She finds it warmer and a little saltier than she'd imagined.

"I love you, Harry," Hermione says as she watches him race off.

He's sacked that evening, of course, for having misplaced his security badge.

* * *

Stolen badge in hand, Hermione races across the roadway, freed at last. She's barefoot in the snow.

She tries to flag down a passing auto and then there's a loud horn and bright lights. A lorry skids sideways toward her and she doesn't even have time to scream.

* * *

"Hermione?" Harry's voice is pained. He's holding her tenderly to his chest.

"I'm going to bloody kill Lestrange," Ron says. "I don't care what it takes, I swear it Harry."

"You and me both, Ron."

Though she's shivering from the after-effects of the _Cruciatus_, Hermione feels warm and loved. She smiles as she stirs, snuggling into his embrace, wondering for the moment what is real and what isn't - and deciding that maybe it doesn't matter in the end.


End file.
